Miscommunicating Social Change

Olga Baysha is assistant professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

Miscommunicating Social Change analyzes the discourses of three social movements and the alternative media associated with them, revealing that the Enlightenment narrative, though widely critiqued in academia, remains the dominant way of conceptualizing social change in the name of democratization in the post-Soviet terrain. The main argument of this book is that the "progressive" imaginary, which envisages progress in the unidirectional terms of catching up with the "more advanced" Western condition, is inherently anti-democratic and deeply antagonistic. Instead of fostering an inclusive democratic process in which all strata of populations holding different views are involved, it draws solid dividing frontiers between "progressive" and "retrograde" forces, deepening existing antagonisms and provoking new ones; it also naturalizes the hierarchies of the global neocolonial/neoliberal power of the West. Using case studies of the "White Ribbons" social movement for fair elections in Russia (2012), the Ukrainian Euromaidan (2013-2014), and anti-corruption protests in Russia organized by Alexei Navalny (2017) and drawing on the theories of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Nico Carpentier, this book shows how "progressive" articulations by the social movements under consideration ended up undermining the basis of the democratic public sphere through the closure of democratic space.

AcknowledgementsIntroductionPart I. Theoretical FoundationsChapter 1. Democratic Globalization or Global Coloniality? From Perestroika to the Present.Chapter 2. The Genealogy of the Uniprogressive ImaginaryChapter 3. Discourse Theory by Laclau and Mouffe and Its Further ElaborationsPart II. The Uniprogressive Discourse of Social Movements in RussiaChapter 4. "They Were Very Far Removed from the People..."Chapter 5. White Ribbons and the Echo in the DarkChapter 6. The New Protest GenerationChapter 7. Antagonism without AgonismPart III. The Uniprogressive Discourse of the EuromaidanChapter 8. Shadows of the PastChapter 9. The Uniprogressive Imagination of the EuromaidanChapter 10. The Antagonisms of the EuromaidanChapter 11. The Discursive-Material Knot of the EuromaidanChapter 12. In the Name of National UnityPart IV. ConclusionsChapter 13. Global Coloniality Instead of Democratic GlobalizationEpilogue. Personal ReflectionsBibliographyIndexAbout the Author