Biopolitics, Necropolitics and New Russia Studies

Abstract: Today’s debate on academic qualifications of the Russian political regime challenges simplistic explanations through the lens of such traditional categories of political analysis as nationalism, conservatism, traditionalism, or patriotism. Many scholars agree on the need for the renovation within the scholarly apparatus of Russia studies. Against this backdrop, the concept of biopolitics pops up as an alternative explanatory tool opening up new possibilities for identifying points of cohesion and continuity in the regime’s discourses and practices. The biopolitical approach can be helpful for a better understanding of the genealogy of Putin’s regime with its multiple names and categorizations. This seminar will discuss how the illiberal version of biopolitics is heavily contaminated with strong necropolitical element that have ultimately de-actualized the main object of biopolitical regulations – the population as an object of care and protection.

Andrey Makarychev is Professor of Regional Political Studies at the University of Tartu Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies. He teaches courses on "Globalization", "Political Systems in post-Soviet Space", "EU-Russia Relations", "Regional Integration in post-Soviet Space", "Visual Politics", and “The Essentials of Biopolitics”. He is the author of Popular Biopolitics and Populism at Europe’s Eastern Margins (Brill, 2022), and co-authored three monographs: Celebrating Borderlands in a Wider Europe: Nations and Identities in Ukraine, Georgia and Estonia (Nomos, 2016), Lotman's Cultural Semiotics and the Political (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), and Critical Biopolitics of the Post-Soviet: from Populations to Nations (Lexington Books, 2020). He co-edited a number of academic volumes: Mega Events in post-Soviet Eurasia: Shifting Borderlines of Inclusion and Exclusion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), Vocabularies of International Relations after the Crisis in Ukraine (Routledge, 2017); Borders in the Baltic Sea Region: Suturing the Ruptures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). His articles have been published in such academic journals as Geopolitics, Problems of Post-Communism, East European Politics and Societies, European Urban and Regional Studies, Slavic Review, among others.

Registration required: https://forms.gle/NpqNn3doT6L2YW3b9