Event Date: January 30, 2018 - 12:00 to 13:30
Location: FSS 4004, 120 University Private
CIPS and the International Theory Network present:
The concept of hegemony holds significant promise for both theoretical and empirical studies of global inequalities and hierarchies. There is a divide among neo-Gramscian scholars between historical materialist approaches and poststructuralist theories foregrounding the discursive dimension of hegemony. Using Russian national identity debate as an empirical illustration, I advocate a more intense conceptual exchange across this divide. I propose to do this on the basis of a monist ontology, where hegemony serves as the primary ontological foundation for a wide range of phenomena, including international multiplicity as such. On the one hand, this bridges towards the recent scholarship on uneven and combined development, and in particular to Justin Rosenberg’s view of unevenness as the foundational feature of the international. On the other hand, such an approach brings to a new level the discussion on Russian internal colonisation and subaltern imperialism. The position of the Russian educated class in between two hegemonic orders, global and national, explains the nation’s perpetual quest for a secure European identity, combined with the equally persistent assertion of authenticity and spiritual superiority.
Viacheslav Morozov is Professor of EU–Russia Studies at the University of Tartu, he also chairs the Council of the UT’s Centre for EU–Russia Studies (CEURUS). Before moving to Estonia in 2010, he had taught for 13 years at the St. Petersburg State University in Russia. His current research explores how Russia’s political and social development has been conditioned by the country’s position in the international system. This approach has been laid out in his most recent monograph Russia’s Postcolonial Identity: A Subaltern Empire in a Eurocentric World (Palgrave, 2015), while the comparative dimension is explored, inter alia, in the edited volume Decentring the West: The Idea of Democracy and the Struggle for Hegemony (Ashgate, 2013). He is a member of the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS Eurasia). In 2007–2010, he served on the Executive Council of the Central and East European International Studies Association (CEEISA).
This presentation will be held in English and is open to the public.