Looking Eastward: US-Identity, Western Values, and Vulnerable Russian Bodies

The intersectional discourse analysis investigates US-American discourses around Russia, its citizens and the construction of (national) cultural values, cultural representations, and identities. In recent years, public media in the United States, especially the daily news genre, frequently focused on the vulnerability of Russian women, LGBTs, and people with disabilities vis-à-vis the Russian state, the Orthodox Church, and mainstream society. Mainstream popular culture discovered Russian feminists, queers, and people with disabilities as worthy of its attention: popular figures like singer Madonna spoke out in solidarity with Russian LGBTs and the group Pussy Riot, and TV series (The Americans 2013-) and Hollywood films (Salt 2010) started featuring Russian protagonists. The proposed project asks for the reasons, cultural significance and goals of the increasing interest in Russian subjects and bodies. Building on work on embodiment and vulnerability (Butler, Grosz etc.), it interrogates into the place of Russian vulnerable bodies and citizens against the background of the increasing disassociation of Russia from the US as well as Europe within media reports, tabloids, TV- shows, and popular culture, as well as countercultural discourses. The key hypothesis is that within US-mainstream as well as countercultural discourses Russia serves as paragon for intolerance and authoritarianism that allows for a construction of the USA as the most tolerant and progressive country in the world. The points or figures of reference for this binary co-construction are the regimes victimssexual and gender minorities, women and people with disabilities. With the US, the whole global West become signified as a positive role model, against the anti-modern, backward and orthodox Russian Federacy. Moreover, the ideas of what makes modernity or postmodernity modern, as well as its core concepts of freedom, tolerance and progress become reframed along and against the image of Russia. Inner-Russian (counterhegemonic) discourses contribute to the construction of Westerness as progressive and tolerant. Accordingly, the project includes discussions of Russian in addition to the US-material. The project builds on the massive corpus of work on the Cold War (Whitfield, Lipsitz, Nadel, Fousek etc.). Moreover, it builds on previous works examining the position of Russia and Eastern Europe within the framework of Enlightenment (Wolff, Neumann). It connects this works with the crucial contributions of recent American Studies scholars investigating into the production of notions of modernity against the backdrop of the racialized other by using postcolonial, gender and queer theory (Puar, Reddy, Ferguson and Hong). Including works that specifically analyze homosexuality, ablebodiedness and gender-based violence within Russia (Essig, Healey, Baer etc.) and contributions on East/West discourses (Kulpa, Mizielinska etc.), the project aims at a thorough analysis of the construction and purpose of vulnerable Russian bodies in US-national, Russian as well as international media contexts.

The project analyzed contemporary US views on Russia within the climate of a New Cold War. From ca. 2012 to early 2015, US newspapers, online news, political and entertainment magazines focused on sexual minorities, and vulnerable women to present Russia as a sphere of different values to the US. While Russia appeared old-fashioned and conservative in this comparison, the US could be presented as a united, liberal and progressive nation. Especially liberal mainstream media, and lesbian, gay and transgender media, compared Russian and US values in articles around the so-called anti-gay propaganda law or the public case of the Russian feminists Pussy Riot. They discussed Russian homophobia, sexism and misogyny to construct a seemingly universally liberal US-identity and nation, by pointing to the recent legalization of gay marriage etc. The media chose a very limited set of gay victims and feminists to make their case. Presenting beautiful, young and white martyrs only, they constructed a strong opposition between a positive US and a negative Russia, by ignoring inner-US questions of ageism, racism and the discrimination of bodies with disabilities or non-normative bodies. While news media concentrated on gays and feminists between 2012 and the persecution of the feminist group Pussy Riot and the aftermath of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, TV-shows and movies created a range of interesting female Russians, especially spies and criminals, bringing forward discussions of Eastern vs. Western values. These figures embody conservative values and traditional versions of femininity, against a racially, sexually and culturally diverse US culture. Their Russian heritage is constructed as trauma and this trauma physically and mentally differentiates them from the rest of the white US population. The media interest in Russia and cultural representations increased significantly with the election of the 45th US-president and the various serious political allegations against Russia. Topics such as alleged Russian hackings of elections, state facilities, institutions, and public figures, personal and political ties between th the 45 US President and Russian President etc. dominated. The figure of the Russian President appeared as toxic masculinity and Russia as the enemy number one. It prompted discussions of populism and populist strategies within (liberal) media. The change of power within the US brought a stronger focus on the co-construction of vulnerable Russian bodies vis-à-vis the Russian state. Most significantly, especially liberal media uses images of the Russian President as gay or transgender to delimitate his power. Thereby, it undermines the liberal stance it brought forward in the recent past.