I’ve been reading (among other things) David Kunzle’s article “Gustave Dore’s History of Holy Russia: Anti-Russian Propaganda from the Crimean War to the Cold War”. In addition to some of the most bizarre academic narrative outside Derrida that I’ve encountered yet, the article had the following great bit:
“1812″ had already figured in Doré’s history as a refrain, a premonition; and afterwards, the date was to be rammed down the Russian throat.
What’s especially nice to me is that it isn’t clear who is doing the ramming – Doré? The imperial, and later Soviet Russian government? France? And what is “the Russian throat”? Does the mythical nineteenth century construct, later revived after the revolution, and again during the Cold War, “The Russian”, have a body now?
