Philosophers do not have the answers to our problems; nevertheless, considering philosophical accounts in times of crisis is of dire importance, as they force us to think the current predicament instead of indulging into our darkest fears. I decided to juxtapose Hannah Arendt's insights with the political unrest in Russia -which intensified after Putin "won" the presidential election - through observing the Russian blogosphere; mainly because the blogosphere (to some degree) captures the emergence of an identity-crisis that has been accompanied by a series of protest, a feminist punk-group behind bars, a former political contestant in Astrakhan on hunger-strike, and a poet Kirill Medvedev arrested on 19th of April.
Why Arendt?
In her "Concept of History" Arendt states that the subject of history is the remembrance of various interruptions of our daily lives, or in other words the extraordinary.[1] The current political situation in Russia offers a plethora of such interruptions, which have been magnified and gained prominence through the blogosphere. The pussy riot (a nice link for those who can read Russian can be found here) incident was turned into a case (delo in Russian) due to the harshness of the sentence the members of the punk-group received after performing a song at the Christ the Savior Cathedral. Russian bloggers were very active in covering the story as well as circulating the letters the members of the group wrote in prison cells, when the mainstream media successfully ignored the details of the case. Furthermore, political representatives such as Irina Hakamada aptly pointed out that the unrests are labeled as provocations by the regime as an attempt of active de-legitimization, where the pussy-riot incident is just one among others. The "among others" part is particularly interesting as the protests against electoral fraud in February and March, the emergence of the "white-ribbon" movement, civil resistance activities such as the hunger strike of Oleg Shein, the mockery of the NTV channel when they aired a mockumentary entitled "The Anatomy of Protest" (covered in a previous post) by bloggers and not only, and finally, the imprisonment of the pussy-riot supporters (more than 30 people including Kirill Medvedev) shows that the extraordinary becomes the norm in the Russian context as people re-discover perhaps their power and political might...(?)
Here, Arendt's insights on power and violence are also extremely helpful as we ponder the Russian situation. When she was writing "On Violence" the thread of her thought was swirling around the global student protest movement. She felt compelled to point out the nuanced meanings of the words "power", "strength", "force", "authority", and of course "violence". For her power is not an individual property -in contrast to strength that rests upon a person's character- but power "dwells" in the human ability to act in concert.[2] Such common-action initiatives have been fervently discussed and organized through the Russian blogosphere, as people who took part in various protests, subsequently, blogged their experiences. Going back to Arendt, power requires legitimacy, where its antipode -violence- can never be legitimized because it constantly requires justification! Violence "appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance."[3] Does that signify the "end-point of the horizon" for the current power constellation in Russia?
A monolectic response to the above question is absolutely not appropriate, since the issue is much more complex than mere popular dissatisfaction (The Open Society Foundations hosted a really interesting panel in this regard!) However, the blogosphere as a personalized example of the network-structure offers an alternative organization of power, and as such acquires authority...at least of some kind.
Why Arendt?
In her "Concept of History" Arendt states that the subject of history is the remembrance of various interruptions of our daily lives, or in other words the extraordinary.[1] The current political situation in Russia offers a plethora of such interruptions, which have been magnified and gained prominence through the blogosphere. The pussy riot (a nice link for those who can read Russian can be found here) incident was turned into a case (delo in Russian) due to the harshness of the sentence the members of the punk-group received after performing a song at the Christ the Savior Cathedral. Russian bloggers were very active in covering the story as well as circulating the letters the members of the group wrote in prison cells, when the mainstream media successfully ignored the details of the case. Furthermore, political representatives such as Irina Hakamada aptly pointed out that the unrests are labeled as provocations by the regime as an attempt of active de-legitimization, where the pussy-riot incident is just one among others. The "among others" part is particularly interesting as the protests against electoral fraud in February and March, the emergence of the "white-ribbon" movement, civil resistance activities such as the hunger strike of Oleg Shein, the mockery of the NTV channel when they aired a mockumentary entitled "The Anatomy of Protest" (covered in a previous post) by bloggers and not only, and finally, the imprisonment of the pussy-riot supporters (more than 30 people including Kirill Medvedev) shows that the extraordinary becomes the norm in the Russian context as people re-discover perhaps their power and political might...(?)
Here, Arendt's insights on power and violence are also extremely helpful as we ponder the Russian situation. When she was writing "On Violence" the thread of her thought was swirling around the global student protest movement. She felt compelled to point out the nuanced meanings of the words "power", "strength", "force", "authority", and of course "violence". For her power is not an individual property -in contrast to strength that rests upon a person's character- but power "dwells" in the human ability to act in concert.[2] Such common-action initiatives have been fervently discussed and organized through the Russian blogosphere, as people who took part in various protests, subsequently, blogged their experiences. Going back to Arendt, power requires legitimacy, where its antipode -violence- can never be legitimized because it constantly requires justification! Violence "appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance."[3] Does that signify the "end-point of the horizon" for the current power constellation in Russia?
A monolectic response to the above question is absolutely not appropriate, since the issue is much more complex than mere popular dissatisfaction (The Open Society Foundations hosted a really interesting panel in this regard!) However, the blogosphere as a personalized example of the network-structure offers an alternative organization of power, and as such acquires authority...at least of some kind.
This post is dedicated to the poet Kirill Medvedev, who briefly taught in the Russian Department of Dickinson College
[1] Hannah Arendt, Concept of History in The Portable Hannah Arendt, p 279
[2] Hannah Arendt, On Violence, 52
[3] Ibid, 56
[1] Hannah Arendt, Concept of History in The Portable Hannah Arendt, p 279
[2] Hannah Arendt, On Violence, 52
[3] Ibid, 56
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