Elements of alterity in Sasha Sokolov's "Mezhdu sobakoi i volkom"

This dissertation explores the concept of alterity in Between Dog and Wolf (1980), the second and most formally complex novel by Russian émigré author Sasha Sokolov. Situated at the crossroad between philosophy and literary analysis, the study examines how Sokolov’s writing both engages with and problematizes alterity—as a philosophical concept, aesthetic strategy, and ethical stance. Far from being a purely self-referential text, Between Dog and Wolf emerges as a space of resistance to dominant systems of meaning, identity, and representation. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework that includes Derridean deconstruction, feminist and psychoanalytic theory, critical disability studies, Soviet and post-Soviet studies, the thesis argues that the destabilizing effects produced by Sokolov’s narrative experiments are comparable to an encounter with the radical alterity of the Other and therefore demands an ethical attitude of hospitality towards the unknown. Through close readings and theoretical analysis, the study investigates four key areas where alterity emerges in Sokolov’s prose: the representation of female otherness (Chapter 2), male dismemberment (Chapter 3), and the formal devices of skaz and ekphrasis (Chapter 4). The thesis contends that Sokolov’s use of characters and formal strategies generates a poetics of indeterminacy that resists closure and totalization, foregrounding ethical stances of alterity. The broader aim of this research is to reposition Sokolov not merely as an aestheticist or language virtuoso, but as an engaged thinker of difference whose work offers a sustained reflection on the philosophical, ethical, epistemological, and political implications of literary practice. By framing Between Dog and Wolf in the context of post-war philosophical discourse the thesis aims to contribute to Sokolov scholarship as well as to contemporary theoretical debates on alterity.