On October 14, at 5:00 PM (Tbilisi time), the Anthropology Research Center and the Doctoral Program in Anthropology at Ilia State University will host an online lecture by Dr. Ivan Gololobov from the University of Bath, titled – ”Magical Putinism. How Magic Drives Contemporary Politics”.

The presentation looks into the magical thinking behind ideological constructions of Putinism as a political discourse. Drawing on the background of Laclau, Mouffe and other theorists of political discourse, it argues that the discourse of Russian authorities in general follow the principles of magical thinking as they are described by cultural anthropologists. Discourse constructed in the logic of magical thinking creates particular form of spiritual coherence which is antagonistic to political articulation and construction of political identities. The article suggests that this antagonism outlines a new challenge posed to political theorists by the rise of magical politics and “obscurantism” of the new autocracies where the main line of the struggle are no longer drawn between rival ideological projects of hegemonic articulation but between different logics of discourse where one is looking to expand the moment of the political while the other, the magical one,–to reduce and eliminate it.

Dr Gololobov is a Lecturer in Politics and Russian Studies at the Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies at the University of Bath. He joined the Department in2016. Prior to this he was doing research and at the University of Warwick. He was awarded his PhD from the Ideology and Discourse Analysis Programme, Department of Government, University of Essex. He research interests include Russian politics and politically committed art in post-Soviet countries.

Working Language: English

Date and Time: October 14, 5:00 PM (Tbilisi time)

Format: Online via Zoom: https://shorturl.at/6oQ7x 

Attendance: Free and open to the public