Politics of Visibility and Belonging: From Russia ́s “Homosexual Propaganda” Laws to the Ukraine War

219 Pages·2017·7.494 MB·English

by  Emil Edenborg

This is an important book in which the role of visibility in general and the
media as its facilitator in particular is added to the theorization of political
projects of belonging. It focuses on fascinating contesting case studies from
the Russian media but is of generic theoretical and political importance as
well.
Professor Nira Yuval-Davis, Director of the research
centre on Migration, Refugees and Belonging,
University of East London
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Politics of Visibility and Belonging
In this book, Edenborg studies contemporary conflicts of belonging as
enacted in Russian media, from the “homosexual propaganda” laws to the
Sochi Olympics and the Ukraine war, and explores the role of visibility in the
production and contestation of belonging to a political community.
Thebookexamineswhatit isthatdetermineswhich subjects and narratives
become visible and which are occluded in public spheres; how they are seen
and made intelligible; and how those processes are involved in the imagina-
tionofcommunities.Investigatingthedifferentiatedconsequencesofvisibility,
Edenborgdiscusseswhatformsofvisibilitymakebelongingpossibleandwhat
forms of visibility may be related to exclusion or violence. The book maps
and analyzes the practices and mechanisms whereby a state seeks to produce
and shape belonging through controlling what becomes visible in public, and
how that which becomes visible is seen and understood. In addition, it
examineswhat forms contestation can take andwhat its effects may be.
Advancing theoretical understanding and offering a useful way to analyti-
cally conceptualize the role of visibility in the production and contestation of
political communities, thiswork will be ofinterest to students and scholars of
gender and sexuality politics, borders, citizenship, nationalism, migration and
ethnic relations.
Emil Edenborg is Postdoctoral Researcher at Södertörn University, Sweden.
Interventions
Edited by:
JennyEdkins,AberystwythUniversityandNickVaughan-Williams,
UniversityofWarwick
The series provides a forum for innovative and interdisciplinary work that
engages with alternative critical, post-structural, feminist, postcolonial, psy-
choanalytic and cultural approaches to international relations and global
politics. In our first 5 yearswe have published 60 volumes.
We aim to advance understanding of the key areas in which scholars
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their interventions, and to present innovative analyses of important topics.
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studiesin international politics.
We are very happy to discuss your ideas at any stage of the project: just
contact us for advice or proposal guidelines. Proposals should be submitted
directly to the Series Editors:
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Nick Vaughan-Williams ([email protected])
‘As Michel Foucault has famously stated, ‘knowledge is not made for under-
standing; it is made for cutting’. In this spirit the Edkins–Vaughan-Williams
Interventions series solicits cutting edge, critical works that challenge main-
stream understandings in international relations. It is the best place to con-
tribute post-disciplinary works that think rather than merely recognize and
affirm the world recycled in IR’s traditional geopolitical imaginary.’
Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawai’i at Mãnoa, USA
Refugees in Extended Exile
Living on the Edge
Jennifer Hyndman and Wenona Giles
The Political Afterlife of Sites and Monumental Destruction
Reconstructing Affect in Mostar and New York
Andrea Connor
Politics of Visibility
and Belonging
’ “ ”
From Russia s Homosexual Propaganda
Laws to the Ukraine War
Emil Edenborg
Firstpublished2017
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Contents
List of figures ix
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
Tverskaya Ulitsa, Moscow, May 2006 1
Projects of belonging in contemporary Russia 2
The concerns of the book 3
Contributions 5
Starting points: media, belonging, visibility 8
Research design and methods 12
Structure of the book 18
1 Politics of belonging: From speech to visibility 21
Politics of belonging: the issues at stake 21
Politics of belonging as speech: (counter)narratives and
(counter)publics 27
Politics of belonging as visibility contestations 34
2 Russian media as a space of appearance 48
A historical overview of media in Russia 50
Containing, amplifying and contesting visibility in Russia 58
Revisiting the audience(s) 68
Conclusion 71
3 “Homosexual propaganda”: Regulating queer visibility 76
Queer visibility, belonging and geopolitics 77
Regulating queerness in Russian history 80
The dominant interpretation of the propaganda law 81
viii Contents
Tensions in the narrative 95
Conclusion 98
4 Sochi: The nation on display 106
Politics of belonging and the spectacular 107
Contexts and controversies around the Sochi Games 110
Sochi-2014 as a project of belonging 112
Contesting the Sochi spectacle 128
Conclusion 138
5 Ukraine: Spectacles and specters of war 148
War, (in)visibility and belonging 150
Part one: satire and violent cartographies 153
Part two: spectacular and spectral homecomings 168
Conclusion 183
Conclusion: Nothing more to see? 190
The limits of speech 191
Arrangements of visibility and the production of belonging 192
Visibility, invisibility and resistance 194
Russian politics, belonging and visibility 195
Seeing ahead 198
Index 200
Figures
4.1 The Sochi patchwork pattern 116
5.1 “I am leaving you …” 155
5.2 “Rising food prices in 2014 – but Crimea is ours!” 156
5.3 “Crimea is ours!” 156
5.4 “Obamawill not pass!” 157
5.5 “Abkhazia is already blossoming. Now it’s Crimea’s turn!” 157
5.6 “Let’s go! We have arrived!” 158
5.7 “Your tanks are penetrating me deeper and deeper, don’t stop” 160
5.8 “I love my homeland!” 161
5.9 Kremlin tower 165
5.10 “These Russians are so strange …” 165
5.11 “This is how Lvov looks now …” 166
5.12 “We do not want war” 166
5.13 “We lie” 167
5.14 Graves in Pskov 173
5.15 Graves in Pskov 174