SECURING THE STATE IN POST-SOVIET EURASIA: POWER, DISCOURSES OF DANGER AND NON-STATE ENTITIES

 

WHAT:
BROWN BAG SEMINAR
Ondrej Ditrych [1]
Research Fellow
International Security Program

 

WHEN:
May 8, 2008, Thursday, 12:15-2:00 pm 

 

WHERE:
Belfer Center Library, Littauer 369
79 John F. Kennedy Street
Harvard U. Kennedy School of Government
Cambridge, Mass.

WHO CAN ATTEND:
Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first-come first-served basis.

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
E-mail susan_lynch@ksg.harvard.edu [2]
or visit  belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/events/3670/securing_the_state_in_postsoviet_eurasia.html
[3]

Receive research on international security issues by signing up at:
belfercenter.org/subscribe.html [4].  Check the box marked "international security."

 

EVENT DESCRIPTION, from event Web page [5]:

Ondrej Ditrych's presentation will examine recurring themes in discourses of danger disseminated by governments in post-Soviet Eurasia.

It will be assumed that the dominant role played by non-state entities (separatists, terrorists, bandits) in those discourses results primarily from incumbent elites' attempts to legitimize expanding political power and perpetuating "state of exception" to effect a "normal state" — e.g. of sovereignty over territory as delimited in dominant historical narratives — by eradicating these non-state others.

Manipulation in representation of their identities, e.g. rendering separatists as "terrorists", is a frequent feature of these narratives, as is the deliberate confusion between the state and the government.

Building on the tenets of critical theory and Foucault's analysis of discourse, the paper presented employs a modified securitization theory to analyze security narratives in Republic of Georgia disseminated by successive governments by Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Eduard Shevardnadze, and Mikhail Saakashvili.

 

Story Location See map: Google Maps [6]