Andrey Makarychev

Bio: Andrey Makarychev is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Field (Bourdieu). The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 2 citations.

Visual Biopolitics: Outlining a Research (Sub)field

Abstract: The article introduces the concept of visual biopolitics as a new research approach to studying politics. The analysis starts with a discussion of how visualization might be helpful for political analysis and continues with academic engagement with semiotic studies, along with the theories of aesthetic and mimetic representation and performativity. Then the author explains how visuals can trigger political debates, particularly in the sphere of biopolitics and biopower, as well as in the adjacent domains of sovereignty, governmentality, and border politics. The concluding section projects the visual biopolitics frame onto the field of illiberal studies.

Biopolitics of Scale: Architecture, Urbanism, the Welfare State and After

Abstract: Michel Foucault’s notes on how, since the late eighteenth century, modern urbanism has been entangled with the biopolitical regime of security opens up the space for a general theoretical framework to account for the instrumentality of architecture and urbanism within and after the European welfare state, and requires posing the question of the historical specificity of this instrumentality in the post-war period.1 This question can be addressed by reading Foucault in the context of the “scale debate” that has taken root principally in the fields of geography, sociology, and the political sciences. This suggests the possibility of theorizing the biopolitical project as a project of scalar organization of society, and urbanism as a project of biopolitics of scale, by which is meant the production of scales as historically specific frameworks of the biopolitical regime. In this sense, architecture and urbanism of the post-war period need to be addressed by focusing on their instrumentality in the rescaling of sociopolitical processes which facilitated the shift from the consolidation of the welfare state to the processes of its increasing deconstruction initiated in the 1970s. This requires conceptualizing scale as socially produced material frame of social activity,2 or, in the words of Erik Swyngedouw, as “the arena

Ressentimentale Politik

Abstract: Zusammenfassung In diesem Beitrag wird politische Kommunikation in den Sozialen Medien aus dem Blickwinkel der Gefühlsarbeit analysiert. Die Etablierung mobilisierender Narrative wird als Verschränkung von konkreten Ereignissen, kollektiven Wissensbeständen und Affektproduktionen verstanden. Die Rekonstruktion der medialen Praxis erfolgt anhand der Analyse eines YouTube-Videos einer rechten Fraueninitiative zur Kölner Silvesternacht. Dafür werden Mechanismen des Ethnosexismus skizziert und deren affektive Grundierung ausgeleuchtet. Nach der Darstellung des empirischen Falls wird das methodische Vorgehen, angelehnt an den Vorschlag einer Audiovisuellen Grounded Theory Methodologie (AVGTM), vorgestellt. Als Schlüsselkategorie wird die Arbeit an und mit dem ‚ethnosexistischen Ressentiment‘ herausgearbeitet.

Understanding Russophone Estonian Identity Through Popular Culture: An Analysis of Hip-Hop Hit “für Oksana”

Abstract: Since emerging in the early 1990s, Estonian hip-hop has developed in line with other cultural and artistic projects in the country, reflecting attempts to foster a homogeneous society, yet ultimately cultivating one where diversity and multiculturalism prevail. As a genre where minority groups are frequently presented as “authentic,” hip-hop and its visual and performative manifestations provide a valuable platform to examine expressions of identity. To this end, several Estonian hip-hop musicians have explored aspects of being “post-Soviet” in contradistinction to official hegemonic discourses, which outright reject the Soviet past and emphasize titular ethnicity as a cornerstone of national identity. This article uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Multi-Modal Discourse Analysis (MMDA) to examine the lyrics and accompanying video of popular hip-hop song “für Oksana” by “Nublu featuring Gameboy Tetris.” Doing so highlights how the song’s basic narrative acts as a metaphor for experiences of integration processes between ethnic Estonians and Russophones since Estonian independence. I argue that through a combination of linguistic and cultural codeswitching, “für Oksana” constitutes an expression, performance, and negotiation of Russophone Estonian identity from both insider and outsider perspectives, emphasizing the need to understand Russophone Estonians as more than simply “Russians who live in Estonia.”