TRICKSTER’S WARS: RUSSIA’S NEBULOUS CHALLENGES TO THE LIBERAL WORLD ORDER

Third Lecture from CEURUS Public Lecture Series, on 19 April 2022

Anatoly Reshetnikov, Webster University (Vienna)

The lecture is going to be held at 14.15 – 16.00, at Lossi 36, room 214, and is open to everyone interested in the topic.

Ever since Russia attacked Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the global media coverage of the ongoing military aggression followed two identifiable patterns. On the one hand, it conveyed the near universal indignation over the war crimes and atrocities committed by Russia. On the other hand, it revealed a degree of bemusement over Russia’s obsolete and largely dysfunctional army, its unmotivated and often clueless soldiers, its failed logistics, and its weirdly provocative negotiating team, headed by the former Minister of Culture, the author of one completely nonsensical dissertation on Russian history. Thus, while waging its war in a criminal and immoral fashion, Russia also becomes a target of ridicule, revealing one incapacity after another. Still, it keeps pushing forth. In his previous research,  Anatoly Reshetnikov has identified a strange combination of apparent maliciousness and self-inflicted derision as trickstery, i.e. a situational role often performed by political actors that occupy an ambivalent and conflicting place in the international society, as seasoned, well-established members and stigmatized personages at the same time. The trickster unsettles the ideal liberal (global) public sphere through its simultaneous performance of emancipatory and anti-emancipatory logics, through duping others, but also being duped itself. In this talk, Anatoly Reshetnikov will look at how the trickster logic has unfolded in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Anatoly Reshetnikov

Anatoly Reshetnikov is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Webster University (Vienna). He holds a PhD in Political Science from Central European University and has been a Visiting Researcher at University College London and Lund University. He also serves as Associate Editor of New Perspectives, the interdisciplinary journal on politics and international relations of Central and Eastern Europe. Reshetnikov’s work has been published in the European Journal of International Relations, Security Dialogue and Russian Politics, among other places.

Forwarded by: Fidan Vali, Communication Specialist, fidan.vali@ut.ee