Upcoming Symposium in Parnu, Estonia, Aug 20: "Paradoxes of the Postcolonial Condition"

[Jessie Labov]

ANNOUNCING THE SYMPOSIUM:

Back in the Ex-USSR: Paradoxes of the Postcolonial Condition

August 20, 2009
Parnu, Estonia

An event organized by the “Alternative Cultures Beyond Borders” Open Society Institute 
HESP-ReSET program in collaboration with International Alternative Culture Center 
(Hungary) and MEEM (Estonia).

Organizers: Aleksei Penzin (Moscow State U) & Jessie Labov (Ohio State U)
Coordinators: Rael Artel (Public Preparation, Estonia) & Olga Zaslavskaya (IACC)

Plenary Speakers: 
Boris Kagarlitsky (Institute of Globalization & Social Movements, Moscow)
Dragan Kujundzic (University of Florida)
 

Following up on discussions emerging from the research group “Alternative Culture 
Beyond Borders," we have organized a full-day symposium which will explore more 
thoroughly the meaning behind terms such as “postsocialist” and “post-Soviet.” We will 
also provide a brief overview and interrogation of the application of postcolonial theory to 
this area. The range of topics includes economic relations between former “colonies,” 
language use and minority discourse in this corner of the former USSR, emigration and 
re-emigration, uses of the past, and the question of how Russian identity is constituted in 
relation to the “imperial” past and a “neo-imperial” present. The goal of this one-day 
event is to find the most productive points of intersection between these different POSTS, 
on the one hand to find possible alternatives to current theoretical approaches to the ex-
Soviet reality, and on the other to reflect on how Cultural Studies (and its associated 
disciplines) are affecting the study of postsocialist spaces.

 
PROGRAM

9:30-11:00 Lecture by Boris Kagarlitsky 

“Cultural Traps of Peripheral Capitalism”

    Contemporary society has turned cultural process into an industry of sorts, which, like 
any other industry, gets its bearings by the exigencies of the market. The problem, 
however, arises from the fact that unlike material production that occupies a clear-cut 
location within the global normative framework of capitalism, the “cultural” production of 
peripheral capitalism does not have a fixed place within this framework. At a first glance, 
the cultural sphere seems to be inherently much freer than the sphere of economic 
production. While economic “breakthroughs” are invariably curbed by the international 
division of labor, the cultural domain would appear to have no such constrains, either 
formal or material. Yet upon a closer look one discovers that the cultural sphere, too, is 
shaped by the so-called “western standard” (i.e. western cultural/economic paradigm?). 
Peripheral societies either seek to adapt their cultural production to western norms and 
standards (for example, the Russian cinema industry that sets out to produce “Hollywood 
blockbusters”, that invariably come out worse) or they obsess with their own 
“authenticity” and “difference”, turning it into a western-style commodity all the same.

BREAK

11:15 Introduction by Alexei Penzin (Moscow State U) & Jessie Labov (Ohio State U) 

11:30-13:00 ROUNDTABLE I: What is Soviet about the Present?

    One way to better understand the term “postsocialist” would be to narrow one’s gaze 
to the specific after-effects of the Soviet system: the historical background of economic 
connections between former Soviet republics; recent patterns of emigration within the 
former USSR and the resultant new forms of nationalism; and the contested nature of 
Soviet history as it is being written and re-written in the present.

Speakers:

Boris Kagarlitsky on the position of ex-Soviet countries in the World System

Andrei Shcherbenok (U. Sheffield) on the Soviet past as ‘traumatic object’

Vladimir Malakhov (Moscow Higher School of Social & Economic Sciences) on emigration 
and new nationalisms in post-Soviet countries

Moderator: Almira Ousmanova (European Humanities University, Vilnius)

LUNCH

14:30-16:00 ROUNDTABLE II: The New Subaltern?

 Another question to ask of the postsocialist moment in former Soviet republics is: "Who 
is subaltern now?" This session will look first at the Russian ‘subaltern’ in the Baltic 
states, and then at the position of Belarus, and the phenomenon of post-Soviet 
nationalism, as seen from both East and West. Seeing the region through these bifocal 
lenses, with multiple possibilities for assuming a state of double consciousness, will 
challenge the overly straightforward mapping of postcolonial subjectivity onto the 
postsocialist subject.

 Speakers:   
Anna Soboleva (Russian Humanitarian Seminar, Latvia) on the state of Russian language 
cultures in Baltic countries

Almira Ousmanova on Belarus vis-a-vis Russia and Europe

Rael Artel on post-Soviet nationalism in Eastern Europe

Moderator: Dzmitry Karenka (European Humanities University, Vilnius)

BREAK

16.30-18.00 PLENARY SESSION: 

What comes “’After’: Russian Post-colonial Identity?”

 Building on Dragan Kujundzic’s 2001 article on “After,” we will look at the some of the 
cultural politics behind the introduction and application of postcolonial theory to ex-Soviet 
countries. 

Featured Speaker: Dragan Kujundzic (U. Florida)

Respondents: Jessie Labov, Alexei Penzin 

Moderator: Andrei Shcherbenok

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