‘He thinks he is inspired, and he is mad’
Journal: Aries
Year: 2023

Abstract During the last decades of the eighteenth century, knowledge about Siberia inspired Catherine II to create the main character of one of her comedies, The Siberian Shaman . Taking Foucault’s dispositif -concept as its theoretical premise, the present paper discusses the historical context in which The Siberian Shaman was written, deconstructs the identity of the comedy’s main character, and explores the socio-political purposes for which the comedy was written. By utilising the perspecti