In April Kirill Filimonov will present his research “Beyond the state as the “cold monster”: Russian alternative media and their hegemonic contestations”.
Online talk will be organized in Zoom April, 13 from 12:00 to 13:30 (GMT+3). If you want to participate and get emails about the next online talks, please leave your contact information here until April, 12 noon: registration form.
Research summary: The mainstream narrative on Russia paints the picture of a strong authoritarian state with a grip over democratic liberties and the civil society. Building on political theory, this talk suggests a somewhat different perspective. Instead of approaching the state as a central and autonomous actor of the political process, it is theorised as an unstable discursive formation, supported by the logic that privileges unity and hierarchy. To argue for the vulnerability of the state, the talk addresses Russian alternative media that deconstruct the hegemonic discourse on the state by re-articulating identities and spaces, and democratising organisational structures.
Presenting the results of an ethnographic fieldwork in Russia, three Moscow-based alternative media will be discussed: the student magazine Doxa, the anarchist magazine Avtonom and the online zine Discours. Their ingenious way of content production and self-management, it is argued, provides multiple examples of how the state as a discourse can be resisted and disrupted on a series of levels, despite its vast ideological and material apparatus that seeks to strike back and suppress dissent.
Speaker’s bio: Kirill Filimonov is a postdoctoral researcher at Charles University in Prague. He has recently obtained his PhD from Uppsala University with a dissertation on the politics of participation in Russian alternative media. His interests and work revolve around political theory, discourse theory, journalism and media studies, and political communication online, particularly in the Russian and Swedish contexts.
Moderator: Dr Olga Dovbysh (Helsinki University)
Online talk on Russian Media is a collaborative initiative between Russian Media Lab Network and Tampere Research Center for Russian and Chinese Media.