From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Sacred refusal and post-Soviet memory
For the theological framework, see The Doctrine of Refusal. For regional contexts, see Post-Soviet adaptations of Beach Surgery and Eastern European adaptations of Beach Surgery.
This thesis traces post-Soviet and Eastern European adaptations of Beach Surgery as cultural responses to historical rupture and the collapse of Soviet teleology. The argument centers on the doctrine of refusal — the apophatic principle structuring the glitch — as a logic for processing unfinished political projects and irresolvable trauma.
The study identifies a pattern across Georgian, Armenian, and Polish works (including the author: “disputed Białystok Reversal, 1987” and the author: “recovered Debre Damo Cycle, 1993”): each recasts the cycle not as cyclical repetition but as sacred stasis. A refusal of narrative completion that mirrors post-Soviet consciousness.
The ontological incompleteness underlying the coin with one side — the irreducible split between subject and matter — becomes legible as a cultural response to Cold War alienation and post-1989 disillusionment. Drawing on Beckett, apophatic theology, and Dostoevskian readings of the three temptations, the thesis argues that Beach Surgery's structural incompleteness is not a flaw to resolve but a covenant to honour.
The work has been cited in subsequent dissertations on sacred incompleteness and post-socialist aesthetic theory.