Abstract
Couched in the critical discourse studies perspective and developing the notion of political imaginary, this article explores the imaginaries of the transnational integration project of the Eurasian Union that are produced in elite discourses in its two key states, Russia and Kazakhstan. The corpus used comprises transcripts of the two states’ parliamentary discussions and speeches by presidents Putin and Nazarbaev. The article focuses on meaning construction through the discursive types, strategies, and topoi employed in the discourses of the new Union, and the linguistic forms called upon for their articulation. Two discursive strands narrating the Eurasian Union are singled out – the technocratic and the romantic, the latter being especially potent for identity-building capacity and the production of imaginaries. The article concludes that the object of integration emerging from the two constituent political agents’ collective imagination appears fluid and incoherent both within and between the two states.
References
Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined communities. London: Verso.Search in Google Scholar
Andreeva, Marina. 2014. Nazarbaev prigrozil vykhodom Kazakhstana iz Evraziiskogo Soiuza [Nazarbaev threatened to leave the Eurasian Union]. Moskovskii Komsomolets 31 August.Search in Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Search in Google Scholar
Bassin, Mark. 2012. National metanarratives after Communism: An introduction. Eurasian Geography and Economics 53(5). 553−556.10.2747/1539-7216.53.5.553Search in Google Scholar
Bassin, Mark. 2015. Lev Gumilev and the European New Right. Nationalities Papers. DOI: 10.1080/00905992.2015.1057560.Search in Google Scholar
Bottici, Chiara. 2014. Imaginal politics: Image beyond imagination and the imaginary. New York: Columbia University Press.10.7312/bott15778Search in Google Scholar
Bottici, Chiara & Benoit Challand. 2013. Imagining Europe: Myth, memory, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139059015Search in Google Scholar
Carta, Caterina & Jean-Fédéric Morin. 2014. EU foreign policy through the lens of discourse analysis: Making sense of diversity. Farnham: Ashgate.Search in Google Scholar
Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1987[1975]. The Imaginary institution of society. Transl. by Kathleen Blamey. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Duma. Stenogrammy zasedanii Gosudarstvennoi Dumy (Transcripts of the sessions of the State Duma). http://www.duma.gov.ru/systems/#transcripts (accessed 4 February 2016).Search in Google Scholar
Dutkiewicz, Piotr. 2015. Introduction. EU−Ru−Asian integration? In Piotr Dutkiewicz & Richard Sakwa (eds.), Eurasian integration − the view from within, 1−11. Abingdon: Routledge.10.4324/9781315738154Search in Google Scholar
Dutkiewicz, Piotr & Richard Sakwa (eds.). 2015. Eurasian integration − the view from within. Abingdon: Routledge.10.4324/9781315738154Search in Google Scholar
Evraziiskii Ėkonomicheskii Soiuz [The Eurasian Economic Union]. 2015. http://www.eaeunion.org/# (accessed on 1 May 2015).Search in Google Scholar
Fauve, Adrien. 2015. A tale of two statues in Astana: The fuzzy process of nationalistic city making. Nationalities Papers 43(3). 383−398.10.1080/00905992.2014.981745Search in Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the Late Modern age. Cambridge: Polity Press.Search in Google Scholar
Hann, Chris. 2016. A concept of Eurasia. Current Anthropology 57(1). DOI: 10.1086/684625.Search in Google Scholar
Hill, Fiona & Lo Bobo. 2013. Putin’s pivot: Why Russia is looking East. Foreign Affairs 31 July. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2013-07-31/putins-pivot?page=show (accessed 28 March 2015).Search in Google Scholar
Hoffman, Katharina. 2012. Eurasian Union – a new name for an old integration idea. Russian Analytical Digest 112(April). 2−4.Search in Google Scholar
Kalinin, Ilia. 2015. Nevroz naviazchivykh sostoianii: Perepisyvanie granits kak otvet na popytki perepisat’ nashu istoriiu [Neurosis and phobias: “Re-writing borders” as an answer to the attempts “to re-write our history”]. Paper presented at Bol’shie Bannye Chtenia Conference. Moscow, 4−5 April.Search in Google Scholar
KhosraviNik, Majid. 2010. The representation of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in British newspapers. Journal of Language and Politics 9(1). 1−28.10.1075/jlp.9.1.01khoSearch in Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał. 2010. The discursive construction of European identities: A multilevel approach to discourse and identity in the transforming European Union. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang.Search in Google Scholar
Laruelle, Marlene. 2004. Two faces of contemporary Eurasianism: An imperial version of Russian nationalism. Nationalities Papers 32(1). 115 −136.10.1080/0090599042000186197Search in Google Scholar
Laruelle, Marlene. 2015. The three discursive paradigms of state identity in Kazakhstan: Kazakhness, Kazakhstanness and Transnationalism. In Mariya Omelicheva (ed.), Nationalism and identity construction in Central Asia: Dimensions, dynamics, and directions, 27–44. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Electronic book.Search in Google Scholar
Libman, Alexander & Evgeny Vinokurov. 2012. Holding-together regionalism: Twenty years of post-Soviet integration. Basingstoke: Macmillan.10.1057/9781137271136Search in Google Scholar
Mazhilis. Mazhilis Parlamenta Respubliki Kazakhstan (Mazhilis − The Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan). http://www.parlam.kz/ru/mazhilis (accessed 4 February 2016).Search in Google Scholar
Mole, Richard C. M. (ed.). 2007. Discursive construction of identity in European politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9780230591301Search in Google Scholar
Morozov, Viatcheslav. 2015. Russia’s postcolonial identity. A subaltern empire in a Eurocentric world. Basingstoke: Macmillan.Search in Google Scholar
Nazarbaev, Nursultan. 2011. Evraziiskii Soiuz: Ot idei k istorii budushchego. Izvestiia 25 October. http://izvestia.ru/news/504908 (accessed 3 May 2014).Search in Google Scholar
Nazarbaev, Nursultan. 2013. Speech at the Assembly on the occasion of the Day of Independence of the Republic of Kazakhstan. 14 December. http://www.akorda.kz/ru/events/astana_kazakhstan/participation_in_events/uchastie-v-torzhestvennom-sobranii-posvyashchennom-dnyu-nezavisimosti-respubliki-kazahstan-1 (accessed 1 June 2017).Search in Google Scholar
Nazarbaev, Nursultan. 2015. Speech given at the Youth Forum “S liderom natsii k novym pobedam” [With the Leader of the nation – to new victories]. 10 April 2015. http://www.akorda.kz/ru/speeches/internal_political_affairs/in_speeches_and_addresses/vystuplenie-prezidenta-kazahstana-nnazarbaeva-na-forume-molodezhi-s-liderom-nacii-k-novym-pobedam (accessed 28 January 2016)Search in Google Scholar
Neumann, Iver. 1996. Russia and the idea of Europe: A study of identity and international relations. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
O poniatii Mangilik El v nedavnem poslanii prezidenta narodu Kazakhstana [About the notion of Mangilik El in the recent address of the president to the people of Kazakhstan]. 2014. Radiotochka 14 February. http://radiotochka.kz/1709-.html (accessed 5 May 2015).Search in Google Scholar
Oushakine, Serguei. 2009. The patriotism of despair: Nation, war, and loss in Russia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Pometantsev, Peter & Michael Weiss. 2014. The menace of unreality: How the Kremlin weaponizes information, culture and money. New York: The Institute of Modern Russia.Search in Google Scholar
Popescu, Nicu. 2014. Eurasian Union: The real, the imaginary and the likely. Chaillot Papers. European Union Institute for Security Studies.Search in Google Scholar
Putin, Vladimir. 2005. Poslanie Federal’nomu Sobraniiu Rossiiskoi Federatsii. [Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation] 25 April. http://archive.kremlin.ru/appears/2005/04/25/1223_type63372type63374type82634_87049.shtml (accessed 28 March 2015).Search in Google Scholar
Putin, Vladimir. 2011. Novyi integratsionnyi proekt dlia Evrazii – budushchee, kotoroe rozhdaetsia segodnia. [A new Eurasian integration project for Eurasia: A future born today]. Izvestiia 3 October.Search in Google Scholar
Putin, Vladimir. 2012. Vstrecha s uchastnikami mezhdunarodnogo diskussionnogo kluba “Valdai” [Meeting with the participants of the “Valdai” international discussion club]. http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/16717/work (accessed 28 January 2016).Search in Google Scholar
Putin, Vladimir. 2013. Vystuplenie Vladimira Putina na zasedanii kluba “Valdai” [Speech at the meeting of the “Valdai” club]. Transcript. Rossiiskaia Gazeta 19 September. http://www.rg.ru/2013/09/19/stenogramma-site.html (accessed 28 January 2016).Search in Google Scholar
Putin, Vladimir. 2014. Bol’shaia press-konferentsiia Vladimira Putina (Vladimir Putin’s major press-conference). 18 December. http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/47250.Search in Google Scholar
Putin, Vladimir. 2015. Priamaia liniia s Vladimirom Putinym [The direct line with Vladimir Putin]. Transcript. 16 April 2015. www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/49261 (accessed 15 May 2015).Search in Google Scholar
Ryazanova-Clarke, Lara. 2012. The “West” in the linguistic construction of Russianness in contemporary public discourse. In Risto Alapuro, Arto Mustajoki & Pekka Pesonen (eds), Understanding Russianness, 3−18. London and New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Ryazanova-Clarke, Lara. 2014. Russian with an accent: Globalisation and the post-Soviet imaginary. In Lara Ryazanova-Clarke (ed.), The Russian language outside the nation, 249−281. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.10.3366/edinburgh/9780748668458.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Shekhovtsov, Anton. 2009. Aleksandr Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism: The New Right a la Russe. Religion Compass 3(4). 697–716.10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00158.xSearch in Google Scholar
Strath, Bo, ed. 2010. Europe and the Other and Europe as the Other, 4th edn. Brussels: Peter Lang.Search in Google Scholar
Suslov, Mikhail. 2012. Geographical metanarratives in Russia and the European East: Contemporary pan-Slavism. Eurasian Geography and Economics 53(5). 575−595.10.2747/1539-7216.53.5.575Search in Google Scholar
Suslov, Mikhail. 2013. “Urania is older than sister Clio”. Discursive strategies in contemporary Russian textbooks on geopolitics. Ab Imperio 3. 351−387.10.1353/imp.2013.0073Search in Google Scholar
Van Dijk, Teun. 1998. Ideology: A multidisciplinary approach. London: Sage.Search in Google Scholar
Van Leeuwen, Theo. 1996. The representation of social actors. In Carmen Caldas-Coulthard & Malcolm Coulthard (eds.), Texts and practices: Readings in critical discourse analysis, 32−70. London and New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Van Leeuwen, Theo. 2008. Discourse and practice: New tools for discourse analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195323306.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Walton, Douglas. 2005. Fundamentals of critical argumentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511807039Search in Google Scholar
Walton, Douglas. 2008. Informal logic: A pragmatic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth 2007. “Doing Europe”: The discursive construction of European identities. In Richard C. M. Mole (ed.), Discursive construction of identity in European politics, 70−95. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9780230591301_4Search in Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2011. “Us” and “them”: Inclusion and exclusion − discrimination via discourse. In Gerard Delanty, Paul Jones & Ruth Wodak (eds.), Identity, belonging and migration, 54–77. Manchester: University of Manchester Press.10.5949/UPO9781846314537.004Search in Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth & Salomi Boukala. 2015. (Supra)national identity and language: Rethinking national and European migration policies and the linguistic 35. 253−273.10.1017/S0267190514000294Search in Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, Rudolf De Cillia, Martin Reisigl & Karin Leibhart. 2009. The discursive construction of national identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, Majid KhosraniNik & Brigitte Mral (eds.) 2013. Right-wing populism in Europe: Politics and discourse. London: Bloomsbury.10.5040/9781472544940Search in Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth & Gilbert Weiss. 2007. Analyzing European Union discourses: Theories and application. In Ruth Wodak & Paul Chilton (eds.), A new agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis: Theory, methodology and interdisciplinarity, 121–135. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/dapsac.13.10wodSearch in Google Scholar
© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
