Russophonia as an Epistemic Challenge

Abstract

This is a contribution to the discussion forum "Conceptualizing Society after the Modern Territorial State and Nation." Marco Puleri offers a new look at the actually existing, rather than hypothetically anticipated, form of postnational collective belonging in the post-Soviet space: the "archipelago" of Russian-speaking communities in different countries. This choice might seem counterintuitive, given the acute threat to national cultures and statehood coming from the ideological and political program of the "Russian world" promoted by the Russian Federation, which claims sovereignty over everything russkii. Puleri argues that the only means to neutralize this threat without assuming an anti-Russian but equally repressive and nationalist stance is to develop a new epistemic approach to Russian language and culture. He notes that Russophone communities in post-Soviet societies have proved their political loyalty to their countries and that the Russian language is a double-edged strategic linguistic weapon. Using Ukrainian Russian-language literature as an example, Puleri demonstrates the possibility of disconnecting the Russian language from Russia or even the Russian way of life and completely reorienting it to local cultural scenarios. The hybridization and "diasporization" of Russian language and culture open the way to its reconceptualization as World Russians – similar to World Englishes. This perspective necessitates the transformation of Russian studies into a transnational discipline – Russophone studies, limited neither to Russia nor to ethnic Russians.