Читать книгу Between Lenin and Bandera - Anna Kutkina - Страница 9

“Let’s Talk Poli†ics…”

—V.K.

Rewriting histories and memories is an important process in revolutionary times. Historians and political scientists have been reading these processes from different perspectives. Understanding dominant meaning-making and challenges to it, however, is an intricate task. I chose to ‘run’ the collected data through the prism of the theory of hegemony by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985) to explore transformations visible in political posters, communist monuments or street-naming, and to look at how they operate in different cultural and political contexts of Ukraine.

As the data-gathering process continued and multivocality of the stands on decommunization came apparent, it became important to examine ‘de-Sovietization’ as a phenomenon that included struggle or contestation of diverse socio-political positions, and, at the same time, did not necessarily imply “dominance” or “supremacy” of one position over the other. According to Arrighi (2010: 365), the theoretical approach of ‘hegemony’ “could be justified if [it is used] to emphasize the connotation of “leadership”: the struggle over the country’s past, present or future being that of articulation (or alternation) of both controversial and similar socio-political and cultural stands. Within such a process, the multiplicity of socio-political positions is core to meaning-making, which employs ideological or cultural concept of hegemony as being indicative of a dialogue rather than discursive and physical domination of one discourse (or ideology) over the other.

The Russian literary theorist, semiotician and philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin, defines ‘multivocality’ as “co-existence of numerous voices (polyglossia) or socio-political contradictions that intersect and interanimate one another in a single language.” When analyzing the collected data, I expanded on such definition of diversity with an objective to add to the theoretical discussion of meaning-making by juxtaposing the mechanisms of hegemonic articulation addressed in the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe (1985), and Bakhtin’s work on heteroglossia. The idea was to look at how the process of hegemonic meaning-making implies the existence of counter-hegemonic formation that is ‘polyglossic’ or multivocal (Bakhtin 1981) and is counterposed to ‘monologism’ or single-thought discourse.

As different elements are being articulated or put together through fixing of meanings (Laclau 1985: 18), the emergence of dialogism (Bakhtin 1981: 28) (or multiple socio-political stands) at particular points carries a tendency of producing and explaining the socio-political and cultural transformations. This is an important addition to discourse theory that easily overlooks the question of change. When it comes to examining multiple forms of decommunization, the process that includes such measures aims towards dismantling the communist legacy of states, governments, cultures, and even the citizens’ mentalities. As we are to examine further, the process of (post)Euromaidan decommunization is the hegemonic practice that is rather complex—an endeavor that forms particular relations and sequence of meanings within physical and political space.

While hegemony is about generation and maintenance of political order, it is also about challenging it—the counter-hegemony. An attempt to establish particular relations and orders of meanings, hegemonic formation presupposes existence of counter-hegemonic construction which is characterized by the contesting nature of the meaning-making process. In other words, if hegemony is deeply grounded, then counter-hegemony is addressing these grounds. Within such a framework, a multiplicity of meanings is feasible, as the process of construction of counter-hegemonic formation involves articulation of potentially diverse, both similar and contentious stands. For Laclau (1985), ‘articulation’ comprises the connection of possible constituents of meaning (or ‘elements’), with the result that meaning arises and that these constituents become what he calls ‘moments’—“signs that have their meaning fixed by discourse” (Rear and Jones 2013: 8). In other words, as an array of discourses, each structuring reality in a particular way, compete to define what is ‘true’ within a particular aspect of the social world (ibid: 5), meanings are being altered and reconstructed.

To address an ‘outcome’ of construction of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic formations within the physical and discursive space—graffiti, monuments, street names, or political poster exhibitions, for instance, I expanded on Benedict Anderson’s (1983) classical theory of the ‘imagined communities.’ For Anderson (1991: 6), a nation is ‘imagined’ because “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” When analysing the collected data, there emerged the necessity for examining multiple modes of articulation of the imaginings. I narrowed the point of the departure from ‘nation’ (Anderson 1983: 7) and looked at construction of the ‘imagined communities’ at different levels of the state, be it that of the government or the elites, or that of the ordinary citizens. The hegemonic meaning-making, further on, implies the existence of counter-hegemonic formations that are ‘polyglossic’ (Bakhtin 1981) by nature of the diversity of people’s opinions.

From the perspective of politics of the meaning-making, the articulation of hegemonic formations (Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Modelski 2015; Overbeek 2019) affect (or define) the daily existence of a state’s citizens. For Laclau, ‘articulation’ comprises the connection of possible constituents of meaning (he calls ‘elements’) with the result that meaning arises and that these constituents become what he calls ‘moments.’ Within the context of cultural studies, for instance, an example of articulation would be “the formation of a methodological framework for understanding of what a cultural study does” (Slack 2012: 18). On the other hand, Slack argues, articulation also “provides strategies for undertaking a cultural or political study” and serves as a way for contextualizing the object of the analysis. In her discussion of social reality as being constituted by an ongoing struggle over meaning, Mouffe (1985: 98) defines ‘hegemony’ as “the practice of articulation through which given order is created and meanings of social institutions are fixed.” According to Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 105), further on, articulation is a “practice [that establishes] relations among elements such that their identity is modified.” The renaming of streets or demolition (or preservation) of monuments that I observed throughout my fieldwork is an example of such articulation, where the government or the citizens have been using different objects of urban space to present their political and cultural stands on the past, present and, potentially, future. In this sense, the concept of articulation was particularly relevant, as it allowed the theoretical framework for examination of multiple modes of decommunization, which in itself was a continuously altering phenomenon.

In his analysis of articulation as a practice that both establishes a relation among elements and also modifies their identity, Torfing (1999: 101) argues that “the articulation of discursive elements into contingent moments within a hegemonic discourse takes place in a conflictual terrain of power and resistance, and will, therefore, always include an element of force and repression.” Within the framework of data I collected, Torfing’s acknowledgement of ‘repression’ or contestation as being part of the articulation process has certainly proven to be true. While different discourses remain part of the meaning-making process, in our case—those of Europeanization or decommunization, they operate in the political space of the state and have proven to be the powerful mechanisms of articulation of both the dialogue and discrepancy between the citizens and the government. If one puts all elements together, hegemony could be defined further as “the expansion of a discourse, or set of discourses, into a dominant horizon of social orientation and action by means of articulating unfixed elements into partially fixed moments in a context crisscrossed by antagonistic forces” (Torfing 1991: 101).

Within the field of discursivity, Palonen argues, “antagonisms or heterogeneity is the underlying condition of the meaning-making process” (Palonen 2018: 101). Political articulations simplify this heterogeneous space by establishing a connection between different elements and generating new meanings and dominant narratives and hegemonic formations. Furtheron, discourses are the articulated set of elements (Read and Johnes, 2013: 4) that construct a hegemonic horizon within the process of contestation. Finally, the discursive construction is further defined as the one where meanings are generated relationally through articulation: according to Read and Johnes, it is a product of meaning-making on an uneven ground. At heart there is, however, the underlying heterogeneity. Changing of the street names in Budapest or Ukraine, for instance, is one of the many examples of such meaning-making, where “layering of the political discourses upon [the country’s] landscape is done by powerful social actors and groups with relational ties to the past and future eras” (Palonen 2018: 2). It involves the construction of the hegemonic horizon that is indicative of the ideological transformations of the period (Azaryahu 1996), as well as generation of a discursive universe (Palonen 2018).

Broadly speaking, according to Gramsci (1971: 55), there exist two forms of hegemony: transformist and expansive hegemony. Construction of nationality in such a way that preserves the hegemony of the ruling group while including cultural features from the subordinated groups to ensure their loyalty is an example of transformist hegemony. The successful creation of “a collective national-popular will” is the expansive hegemony. According to Torfing, both forms of hegemony involve the process of revolution-restoration—the political renewal that carries potential for a revolution being an attribute of expansive hegemony. Collecting data, I focused on application (or ‘testing’) of the second, expansive form of hegemony within the context of post-Euromaidan Ukraine. Here, the hegemonic reading of the data provided a model for explaining the formation of a collective will within a heterogeneous state. “An offensive strategy for building an active consensus to mobilize the masses in a revolution” (Torfing 1999: 111), expansive hegemony contains both an ideological and a political scheme which allows the evolution of particular civic demands and the expression of similarities they expose (Gramsci 1971: 132). Within the expansion of the hegemonic process, contiguity between discursive elements is obtained through re-articulation of meanings. The phenomenon of ‘re-definition’ of nationalist symbols or groups as the discursive and physical elements of democratic transitioning of a (post)revolutionary state, for instance, is one of the examples of such hegemonic formation: it involves re-articulation of meanings to allow integration of particular citizens’ (or governmental) stands.

To be added further, the Laclau-Mouffean, post-Gramscian definition of hegemony is especially valid for analysis of the processes of the re-articulation of a country’s ‘self’ and the ‘other.’ Inspired by the work of Laclau and Mouffe (1996: 32), Kevin DeLuca (1999: 18) writes that “in a world without foundations, without given meanings, the concept of articulation is the means for understanding the struggle to fix meaning and define reality temporarily.” Such definition of articulation is particularly important, as the process of re-articulation of the citizens’ views of the past, present and future takes place through interaction and ‘re-construction’ of multiple elements in their surroundings—monuments, political posters, or the street names.

It should also be noted that in cases such as the disintegration of a colony or an empire, hegemonic (re)articulation takes place within a rather compressed time-frame, and is often accompanied by conflict or confrontation—be it a revolution, a civil war, or any other form of the socio-political turmoil. In such terms, the reconciliation requires additional susceptibility which includes acknowledgement of the existence of multiple rather than homogenous stands—discourses that are heterogeneous in their cultural and socio-political nature. As such, this process consists of a number of discursive formations that are reflective of multivocality of the population. At the administrative level, however, as I illustrate when we move to discussing the data, hegemonic formations carry the potential of being limited in presentation of unilateral rather than multiple socio-political strata. Within the state where the government restrains from acknowledgement of the grassroots political and cultural multivocality, the hegemonic formations may imply further necessity of re-evaluation of regional and national policies to create social space for institutionalization of diversity.

Conventionally, after political alterations like revolutions or the collapse of an empire, we can observe hegemonic articulations emerging in diverse discursive and physical forms. They vary from graffiti, posters or monuments to laying scientific foundations for public meetings, conferences or exhibitions. The public domain of such nature provides space for establishment of heterogeneous meanings. As soon as such visual (or ideological) elements engage with the state’s political or cultural context, there arises ongoing struggle over meanings—be it the definition of modern ‘nation,’ the ‘hero,’ the ‘patriot,’ the ‘colony’ or the ‘colonized,’ the ‘self’ or the ‘other.’ In the Laclauian perspective, the articulation of meanings is taking place in constant juxtaposition of one element against the other and, to a certain extent, even within exclusion of certain elements in the name of justification of the commonly approved political stands—for instance, banning of the Soviet symbols as means of ‘Europeanization’ of the state. As has been the case with the post-Soviet space, the forms of embodiment of such elements are rather diverse, and vary from a critical article, poster, or piece of intellectual property to an open protest or, on the contrary, refusal to participate in a public protest as a statement of silent demonstration. The articulation of meanings, therefore, extends beyond a particular linguistic, cultural or socio-economic group.

To some extent, the policies, departments, routines, procedures, rituals or hierarchies, therefore, may all seem insignificant at face value. However, it is the process of change of such social units that often mobilizes particular response—the government’s support of discursive frameworks that goes along with existing political narrative, and its disapproval of the one objecting an individual or groups in power. This signals the importance of further analysis of the relation between discourse and affect, as well as location of hegemonic construction to involve the question on what socio-political scenarios are at work within a particular process such as that of decommunization.

In her critical stance on exploring the changing conditions of hegemony and counter-hegemony in ‘postmodern and globalized times,’ Carroll argues that “the process of articulation becomes more important than that which is being articulated” (Carroll 2011: 5). As concrete hegemonic projects emerge out of articulation of interests of different social groups, the process of hegemonic meaning-making carries a sense of socio-political and/or cultural accomplishment. Such sense of ‘realization,’ Carroll asserts further, is one of the primary factors that bears potential of making the meaning-making more significant than the final product of articulation. Within a context where the change of political, economic or cultural directories occurs as articulation of intact hegemonic constructions, however, “the perception of the term counter-hegemony as complementary to hegemony,” according to Carroll, is misleading. It is delusive because there is an asymmetry between the two—hegemony and counter-hegemony, which is rooted in different forms of power that are at stake. As long as “power-over is sustained through an effective blending of persuasion and coercion, Holloway argues further, hegemony remains intact” (Holloway 2005: 2). Occurring in either direct or veiled opposition to the aspects of dominant hegemony, the counter-hegemonic struggle takes place through the oppositional politics that vary from global justice movements to local, regional revolutions. At its core, what may seem as the “celebration of fragments in a politics of difference...articulation of counter-hegemonic formations unravels the negation of closure, where fixation of homogeneity is opposed” (Kebede 2005: 12). Ideally, in practical terms, as social solidarity and political unity depend on both the ordinary citizens and the state, the articulation of similarities is to construct the baseline of the political meaning-making.

Finally, in “Universalism, Particularism and the Question of Identity,” Laclau argues that “originally the societies were far more homogeneous than the present ones” (Laclau 1995: 106). For over twenty years, the claim of heterogenization of the society has maintained its relevance: the process of meaning-making, that can be observed in multiple cases of demolition of objects of urban or rural spaces, change of visual signs of discursive articulation, such as change of the street names, or installation of the political poster exhibitions, is the discursive struggle of diversity of meanings. “Different political groupings are differentiated from one another (and differentiate themselves from one another) through evaluations of the national past,” Palonen (2008: 219) argues, and, I would insist further, the present, and potentially the future. As we are to examine shortly, the discursive struggle is taking place at different administrative and civic (ordinary citizens) levels, where both the discursive and physical elements compile contestation. “Street names and statues [for instance] undergo a similar process as political discourses that are created and sedimented through practices of inclusion and exclusion and inscribed through key elements” (Laclau 1990, 2005; Palonen 2006, 2008; Modelski 2018). According to Robinson, through acts of naming or renaming, construction or demolition, both the population and the government are engaged in political acts that ultimately “carry no unified medium” (Robinson 2011: 7). Rather, it is an affluence of diverse social languages—both the discursive and physical ground for multivocality or, as Bakhtin defines it, heteroglossia (Bakhtin 1970: 14).