Issue 4 (81)
| A MODEL OF DIALOGUE BETWEEN POWER AND SOCIETY IN THE TRAVELOGUES OF THE 19TH CENTURY RUSSIAN TRAVELERS TO CENTRAL ASIA | |||
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| Year | 2023 | Number | 4(81) |
| Pages | 16-23 | Type | scientific article |
| UDC | 82-3 | BBK | 83.3.(2)“18” |
| Authors | Churkin Mikhail K. |
Topic | LITERARY IMAGES OF COLONIZATION |
| Summary | The article on the materials of the 19th century Russian travelers’ travelogues reveals the content of the imperial meta-narrative as a model of the dialogue between the “man of power and culture” and the “colonial subaltern” in the situation of Russia’s advance into the Central Asian region. It is suggested that the communication of the imperial power with the colonized territories and peoples, including its subjects, was implemented in accordance with the principle of cultural distance, which was represented and replicated in the texts of the military, diplomats, government officials. The ideological background for the representations of imperial power as a stable structure of domination and subordination of spaces and people was the Enlightenment postulates, as well as the theoretical conclusions of evolutionists and post-evolutionists, which had a significant impact on the processes of internal colonization, in the parameters of which the idea of Central Asia as “Russia’s own East” was established. In the course of the 19th century Russia’s ambitions towards Central Asia evolved from the realization of economic interests to direct political expansion, which initiated the expert and military activity of the central and regional authorities. An analysis of the discourse of travelogue texts has demonstrated the phenomenon of the imperial meta-narrative ability to constant self-reproduction. Within the framework of the travelogue discourse, a model of dialogue between power and society that was equally flexible and most comfortable for the empire was being constructed, in which tolerance for the cultural identity of “subordinates” required reciprocal political loyalty. It was seen as a condition for erasing cultural boundaries and imperial appropriation of a remote region. | ||
| Keywords | imperial meta-narrative, discourse, travelogue, Central Asia, Russian Empire, imperial experts, cultural distance | ||
| References |
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