Labour Libido: The Film “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” and sexualization of Work in Soviet Imaginary

Labour is a central topos of Soviet imaginary, yet it is also an empty signifier, which is constantly replaced with the more seductive and eye-pleasing forms of human activities, such as singing, dancing, which ultimately function as a substitute of sexual act. This operation of replacement creates a hybrid construct of “labour libido,” which, to use Freud’s expression, makes work “bearable” or even, as his Ukrainian translator put it, “turns it into a pleasure”. This research explores sexualization of work in Soviet imaginary and discerns two levels of its operation: the narrative and the symbolic. The narrative level presupposes sexual reward for a hard labour; on the symbolic level, the work itself becomes a substitute for sexual act. The visual regimes of representation of work and their operation on both of these levels are comparatively explored in Stalinist and post-Stalinist collective-farm musicals (Tractor-drivers, The Top Guy) and the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, which combines aesthetic intentions of the avant-garde of 1920s and neorealism of 1960s. Close, shot-by-shot analysis of the novella Working days (Budni) from the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors reveals the cultural operation of disidentification with the official Soviet work propaganda, which was based on the implicit identification of sexual and labour libido. Thus, the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is included in the genealogy of Soviet regimes of representation of work, which widens usual interpretative context of the film, considered mainly in terms of national identity.