From Russia with Love - foto: Dmitriy Gutov

russ

THE WAY TO OBTAIN RIGHTS
FOR POST-COLONIAL DISCOURSE

EKATERINA DYOGOT

Here are two typical talks about Russia between a person living outside it (A) and inside (B):

  1. A: "Everything here (now) is like in the West.
    B is offended.
  2. A: "Everything isn't (still) like in the West.
    B is offended.
Let's point out that B is offended in spite of A's attitude.
In principle any cultural dialogue on Russia could be inserted in these two models with a more or less masked cul-de-sac. What do we have to do to make this dialogue more fruitful? A says: B is to stop being offended and start to agree or disagree within the given system of co-ordinates. B says: A is to stop compare us to the West, judge and talk.
Speaking of the East we decide whether to understand it geographically and technologically, or religiously, culturally, politically (consequently, we can include absolutely different countries). From the first point of view, the East is the West's periphery and province, which then is becoming a universal category. The second point of view tries to overcome universalism by even greater one and proclaims the East to be something "different", real, a space, where things occur the West is only dreaming of, "subconscious" of the West". (B. Groys). This strategy, opened in Russia at the beginning of the XX century, being then original, can be regarded only as a banality. Other variants of the same strategy have become theoretically and practically more flexible and thus more famous. For example, the same understanding of Negroes' identity was formed in France in 1930-s: the theory "negritude" regarded an African as the "Other" of Europe in order to prove the necessity of Africa to Europe. To reach its own wholeness the world has to be "creolized", as any emotionality and sexuality of Africans are qualities being lost by Europe itself.
Though, such notions as "black = sexual", being expressed by whites, were qualified as racist; if African culture was called exotic - politically reactionary, culturally imperialistic and hierarchical. Consequently the main role was played by who was speaking.
These ideas are easily applicable to the identity of the Eastern Europe and Russia. We can find a lot of examples when the West is usurping the right to represent the East and discursively exploits it. For example it prohibits a theoretical expression of a person from Eastern Europe, letting him to tell only about his region. It orders a Russian (or any other) artist to be authentic and exotic and, thus, placed outside the western borders; although, authenticity and independence, proclaimed at his own will, are being criticised as nationalism. In this context any western expression is violence. The request not to be the "Other" (to suit western models) and the request to be the "Other" (to fight western cultural imperialism) is announced to be western cultural imperialism. Dialogue between the East and the West is transforming into an interesting game: the East is catching the West at the repressive character of its notions, and the West, as a revenge, totally ignores the East.

Does the East have a chance to obtain a right to be suitable for post-colonial discourse, which is becoming now a guaranteed life permit for the subject of this discourse? Here, again, the existence of the East is very important. It is very easy to explain why the discourse of cultural minority is hardly applicable to Russia. First, the definition of Russia as the "Other" for the West is not only external (like, for example, a definition of Negroes, given by French in the XVIII century, as the beings motivated only by desire), it is invented by Russia itself and not only because Russia was an object of various racist statements but because it was not an object of any statements at all. Russia still has to prove that its rights were wounded and that it represents minority in respect to the West (even if the discourse concerning race difference inside the white race is totally prohibited). Eventually, Russia, politically and culturally, ignores its own repressive attitude to other cultures inside and around itself. Consequently, chances are limited. All countries of ex-Eastern Block could try to get a status of victims of Russian cultural imperialism, but this topic is of no interest to anybody. Thus, the only possibility left is to consolidate non-western identities. It is an enormous step for Russia - this way gives a chance to discuss Eastern European identity, which has always been ignored in Russia, because it is destroying the basis of a discourse for Russia as being historically unique; consequently, the feminist discourse in Russia meets certain difficulties as the place of a victim, the place of discursive exploitation in the Russian picture of the world is already occupied.

So, trying to stay at a distance from the strategy of modern Russian power and, simultaneously, trying to find understanding within the circle of the western leftist intelligentsia, Russian unofficial culture (in our case, "Moscow Art Magazine") offers to look for the Russian identity not among super-powers but among minorities and tries to apply to the East the constructed systems of discursive privileges used by minorities. The theory of "negritude" was far from being the last stage in the process of African intellectuals' self-cognition. The criticism of the theory was the basis for a fundamental theory, according to which the African discourse is to be liberated of the tiniest traces of the Western language and thinking, thus to use in one's interest the Western post-modern criticism of universalism, "big narration" and ratio, and then to move to hierarchical relations between white and black people. This theory is being criticised for nationalism, and for language terrorism but also for structural terrorism as it transforms the world into the mixture of atoms which do not relate to one another.
The same problem is being now discussed in Europe. How to built a post-binomial model of the world - as a totality (unity) or atomity (difference)? Nowadays, the latest seems to be preferable. Is there a limit for cultural relativism? Where are the borders of eternal decentralisation, if each unit of the structure has a right of the "Other" whole? Can there be a world where everything is another? Can a language and understanding exist in this world? And, is the world, where the lack of discursive repression, the repression of external definition is institutionally guaranteed, also possible? All illusions, concerning decentralisation and possibility to destroy repression, are really very dangerous. For example, "ecological" feminism, which tries to rehabilitate "feminine" qualities as being repressed by the men's culture, is itself extremely totalitarian, as it forces women to go with stereotypes (to do art about women). Our goal is not the "ecology of the West" but the "criticism of the West": all axiomatic definitions, such as the West or the East, are to be contradicted and subjected to doubt.
Thus, I would like to offer the following statements: let's totally refuse the notion of the "Other" and learn to live in the world without the "Other"; let's come back to geographical and historical definition of the Eastern Europe as a margin, basing its identity upon the reality and not upon myths or desires; let's integrate it into the West not as a part of its historic experience (including, first of all, its communist experience); let's eliminate the Western monopoly for anti-hegemony statement and for the criticism of the West; let's understand our own repressive essence. And eventually, the place, which is neither the Western province nor its subconscious, neither the paradise nor it can guarantee anything, still exists.
Ekaterina Dyogot
Critic and theoretician. Graduated from the Moscow State University, the department of art history. Works in the newspaper "Commersant Daily". Author of the book "Terrorist Naturalism" (1998) and numerous articles. Member of the editorial board of the "Moscow Art Magazine". Lives in Moscow.
© 1998 - Ekaterina Dyogot- Moscow Art Magazine N°22





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