On progressive identity and internal colonization: A case study from Russia

Abstract

This article analyzes how the ‘progressive’ imagination of democratically minded intellectuals in Russia discursively produces the internal ‘other’ – Vladimir Putin’s supporters – as a singular monolithic subject whose ‘underdeveloped’ intellectual condition is judged against an imagined scale of human progression. Discussing the case study of a Russian independent radio station Echo of Moscow, the author argues that its democratizing anti-Putin discourse is organized along the lines of a mythological narrative well known since colonial times: struggle between ‘moderns’ identifying themselves with progress and ‘barbarians’ whose barbarian identity is ascribed to them by modernizers. Drawing on postcolonial and media studies, the author suggests that anti-democratic divisions into ‘civilized’ wedom and ‘underdeveloped’ theydom are unavoidable until we realize the full extent of the enslaving potential of the progressive narrative of the Enlightenment.