“Noseological” Parody, Gender Discourse, and Yugoslav Feminisms: Following Gogol′'s “Nose” To Ugrešić's “Hot Dog on a Warm Bun”

Dubravka Ugrešić's 1983 short story “Hrenovka u vrućem pecivu” (“Hot Dog on a Warm Bun”) self-consciously parodies N.V. Gogol′'s 1836 “Nos” (“The Nose”). Building on the tradition of “noseology,” a literary sub-genre in 1820s and 1830s Russia, Ugrešić parodies the highly symbolic interpretations of “The Nose” that dominated both Formalist and psychoanalytic literary criticism in early-twentieth-century Russia. Copying and revising Freudian interpretations of “The Nose,” wherein the nose symbolizes the phallus, Ugrešić substitutes Nada Matić—the female plastic surgeon who finds Mato Kovalić's penis on her hot dog bun—for Gogol′'s Ivan Iakovlevich—the barber who discovers Kovalev's nose in his bread. Through the postmodern misadventures of Matić's “hot dog,” Ugrešić humorously reproduces and undermines the Lacanian assertion that the penis is merely the image of the phallus. As Ugrešić dismantles the phallus's imaginary “veils,” she also unmasks persistant gender inequality and a virulent socio-political backlash during the immediate post-Tito years. Ugrešić embeds in her psychoanalytic parody an incisive reading of gender discourse and local feminisms in 1980s Yugoslavia.