Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines the emergence of what I call “spectral performance” in Putin's Russia. Focusing on the Immortal Regiment initiative, I investigate the growing importance of practices that ask the living to act as surrogates for the dead. My analysis proceeds in three stages. First, applying a memory studies frame, I show how the Regiment helps preserve memory of WWII in a time of significant generational change. Second, drawing on theories of political theology and biopolitics, I show how the Regiment reaffirms the Kremlin's sovereign power to regulate the boundaries between life and death while symbolically displacing sovereignty from the “flesh” of the people to a growing ranks of “immortals.” Finally, focusing on the question of representation, I show how the Regiment helps construct an oppressive distribution of the sensible that privileges the dead over the living. I conclude by examining St. Petersburg artist Maksim Evstropov's necro-activist project Party of the Dead as a cultural critique of the Regiment.
Source: Slavic Review
DOI: 10.1017/slr.2021.6
Author: Maksim Hanukai
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,980
OpenAlex ID: W3134796602