Monstrous Epistemology: Paranoia and Postmodernism Across the Iron Curtain

This chapter argues that the Cold War was part of the wider cultural shift that ushered in postmodernism. Despite the scholarly tendency to regard postmodernism as exclusively a Western phenomenon, it developed in many parts of the world and on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Both American and Soviet cultures exhibited features of what I call ‘monstrous epistemology’-a combination of paranoia, indeterminacy and longing for the sublime-in which reality itself became a monster. This epistemology was on display in science fiction, which was a primary vehicle for the postmodern sensibility in the USSR. To substantiate this claim, the chapter offers a parallel reading of two SF texts from the Cold War, one American and one Soviet.