The Department of Russian and Slavic studies and the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture, University of Amsterdam, welcome guests to 'The Kremlin Well: A Critical Theory of the Parasitic State,' a lecture by professor Alexander Etkind (European University Institute, Florence).
'Energy Humanities is a new and booming field of international research, but Russian Studies eschew this field despite its obvious relevance. While economic dependence of post-Soviet Russia on its oil and gas industry has been well-known to scholars, political meanings and cultural repercussions of this situation have not been adequately studied. In this talk, I discuss Russia as a primary case for a new critical theory of resource-based capitalism, and I will illustrate this argument by sounds and images produced by contemporary culture.'
Professor Alexander Etkind is Mikhail Bakhtin Professor of History and Russia-Europe Relations at the European University Institute (Florence), and coordinator of the EUI-funded research project Resources of Demodernization: Fossil Energy and Human Capital in the Political Economies across Eastern Europe (2017-2018). Among other books, Etkind authored Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied (Stanford University Press 2013), Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience (Polity Press 2011), and (upcoming) Roads Not Taken: An Intellectual Biography of William C. Bullitt (Pitt Russian East European 2017).
28 september, 17:00
P.C. Hoofthuis, room 5.31
Spuistraat 134, 1012 VB Amsterdam
