Authors

Discussion

The question of linguistic affiliation and identity preoccupies contemporary Russophone poets in Kazakhstan like no other. Belonging to different generations, Yuriy Serebrianskiy (b. 1975), Pavel Bannikov (b. 1983), Anuar Duisenbinov (b. 1985), and Ramil Niyazov-Adyldjan (b. 2001) all reflect in their lyrical works on the possibilities and limitations of poetic expression in the Russian language. At the heart of their examination of their own first language, which was also the language of the former Russian-Soviet empire, conducted from a decidedly postcolonial perspective, there is always a desire for critical revision and renewal, even for utopian visions of a new, post-imperial, and multilingual Kazakh identity, not to mention a clear distancing from the Russian state and its aggressive neo-imperial aspirations. At the same time, such language renewal projects require a thorough examination of Kazakhstan's dramatic history in the 20th century, which was marked by the expulsion and destruction of many ethnic groups and their languages. I will therefore argue that almost every critical reflection on language and every vision of the future automatically becomes an act of cultural remembrance. In my discussion of the poetic oeuvre of the four poets mentioned above, I will analyse different forms of such reflections and visions and argue that they are always located at the nexus between language and memory, past and future.