Politics with a Human Face

Identity and Experience in Post-Soviet Europe

Arvydas Grišinas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367884833
• eBook ISBN: 9781315278957
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Politics with a Human Face presents a holistic understanding of identity formation in post-Soviet Europe, arguing that since politics is fundamentally a human affair. In order to adequately understand it, one needs to understand its human side first.

Drawing on the thought of Dilthey, Ricoeur and Plato, the author employs empathy as a method, together with visual and historical analysis, to analyse the role of human experience in post-Soviet politics. As a result, the book offers a theoretical approach for assessing influence of the non-rationalistic factors, such as associative symbolism, human experience, political images and historical narratives, in both domestic and foreign affairs.

A study at the juncture of Social Sciences and Humanities, Politics with a Human Face explores a number of cases, including Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Russia, as well as the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, examining issues of liminal transition, 'far-right' movements, victimhood, ethnic conflict and political paradoxes. Seeking to shed light on the region's agency and perception of both its own political and existential situation, and that of the surrounding world, this book constitutes a timely and original contribution to understanding the post-Soviet Europe.

1 Politics from the Human Perspective

The intention to rearticulate the post-Soviet topic arises from my personal experience, for the majority of my life having lived in the post-Soviet Europe, where, so it seems, historical issues, as well as symbolism and emotionally associative factors, tend to play a dramatic political role. This political space is ridden with paradoxes and rituals, political thought and action that is sometimes difficult to explain or even capture fully using rational thought in its modern definition.¹

The main ambition in this book is to present an argument about the nature of politics and identity that would be positioned on the analysis of issues that are grounded in this “soft” yet profound matter of human imagination, sentiment and experience. This requires a different approach from the mainstream theory in political and social sciences. Paul Ricoeur’s famous phrase about Marx, Freud and Nietzsche being the “masters of school of suspicion” comes to mind when talking about their philosophies and their attempts to unmask the “illusion” in order to reveal the “reality” beyond it.² This common ground of scepticism and perhaps even nihilism is what unites the dominant intellectual strands of both modernity and even more so – late modernity.³ That, in turn, suggests that late modernity is the intensification and radicalisation of modernity rather than a departure from it.⁴ In order to tap into the human factor of politics, what we need to do is to seek hermeneutic understanding of lived and experienced reality rather than pursue the safety of mistrust and scepticism towards the real when approaching such ambiguous and subtle topics.

In this sense, this book draws on a growing body of work that questions the dominant strand of modernity, without however embracing the prevailing relativist rationale suggested by late modernity either. This middle ground attempts to overcome the logic of rationalist scepticism and nihilism by deploying concepts taken from the Platonist tradition, the hermeneutic philosophy and cultural anthropology, also taking into account the pre-reflected, a-rational human experiential aspect. This is done in an effort to transcend the predominant conceptual dialectics regarding identity. On the one hand, identity is popularly articulated as a fluid “cultural construct”, which is relative, purely epistemic, constantly changing and has no relation to ontology. On the other hand, it is understood as unchanging essence, which can be estimated, determined and conserved. This either implies a relativist articulation of identity, according to which genuine selfhood is impossible and there is no such thing as authentic being, or renders it unrealistically stagnant and then fails to account for historical process and human agency. This in turn contrasts with a basic nature of lived experience as a presence-forming process.

Conceptualising the human factor

In order to rethink the question of political identity formation, it is necessary to have a new set of conceptual “tools” and approaches that enables a different articulation of the question. Some of the concepts, such as narratives and images, are of a more methodological character, used in this book as tools to approach the fluid reality of experience and imagination. Yet others, such as mask-identity and quasi-metaphysics, are of a more assertive character, “diagnosing” the condition of societies in question.

However, it is the combination of all of these concepts that allows for the formulation of the new, holistic approach, some serving as means to ask questions and others used to formulate answers. The insights that these concepts capture in the case of post-Soviet Lithuania is later applied to other post-Soviet and post-communist cases. The aim is to understand hermeneutically the cultural meanings in local politics, and to perceive the human experience of the people, participating in these processes of transition and turmoil. From that perspective, without trying to “dissolve the mythologies”, I will nevertheless critically engage with the epistemology about the self and the world that is being employed in those cultural contexts and that shapes their political identities, demonstrating the possible as well as present dangers resulting from the process, and suggesting ways to overcome them.

The theoretical approach that this book employs, and at the same time constructs, consists of three parts. First of all, my account of politics and identity shifts the emphasis from the binary pole of essence and construct, which characterises the dominant interpretations of identity, to the notion of human experience. It is argued that this is fundamental for understanding post-Soviet political identity formation. Second, it hermeneutically inquires into the forms of political practice, instead of concentrating on power relations, in an attempt to uncover the source of the emerging post-Soviet epistemology, in which the new political “self” is articulated. Finally, instead of merely describing identity formation, it critically challenges the notion at the epistemological and political level via analysing the real political outcomes and anthropological premises of these identity formation processes.

Main accounts of political identity

When it comes to discussing political identity, the first two terms that come to mind are ethnicity and nationhood. The predominant anthropological conception of these two terms assumes that ethnicity is an essentialist category, an intrinsic characteristic to a collective, at least insofar as modern times are concerned, while nationhood is something artificial and constructed in a particular historical period.⁵ The essentialism of ethnicity is understood either in cultural primordialist terms (as in the case of Clifford Geertz or Donald Horowitz) or in socio-biological terms (Lev Gumilev, Pierre L. van den Berghe).⁶ While accepting the position that political identity is a part of human inner presence, this book expands this outlook to incorporate the possibility of transformation of this presence through liminal experiences. Other ways of explaining the origins of ethnicity and nationhood are either through rational choice theory, as in case of Fredrik Barth, Paul Brass and others, or through Marxist theory.⁷ I argue that, because fundamental shifts in political identity take place in times of crisis, choices related to identity are more often imitative in nature than rational. There are also contestations that not only nationality, but also nationality as a continuation of ethnicity is an imaginary construct, which makes it also artificial, as claimed by Benedict Anderson or Eric Hobsbawm.⁸ This book will demonstrate, however, how artificial and imaginary elements, these identity “constructs”, become an actual part of political presence and practice.

Finally, ethno-symbolists such as Anthony Smith emphasise the embeddedness of ethnicity into nationalism through a historical process.⁹ The ideas put forward in this book may be most closely linked to the latter, as well as to those of Benedict Anderson, yet they differ significantly. First of all, instead of only inquiring into nationalism and ethnicity, the book is concentrated on political identity in a broad sense, as human experience of political existence. In doing so, it looks into political identity as a part of ontological self, not only as an intellectually perceived notion belonging to a certain constructed collective. It is not claimed here that, by being imaginary, as Benedict Anderson shows, nationhood is less real or, indeed, less authentic. Instead my argument is that imagination, representation, symbolism and mythology are as real a part of politics – at least as important – as power or economic factors. As long as the experience of political “selfhood” exists, it matters to politics. This book will explain how that is possible by concentrating on the moment of transition, of political becoming and, crucially, on the human experience of such a process – with a particular focus on the case of post-Soviet transition. It will inquire into the phenomenology of this transition, into where, as my research shows, these symbols emerge from.

Anthony Smith’s theory recognises ethno-symbols that constitute political identity as often counter-factual and inflated as well. However, he claims that they still constitute the sense of bond and collectivity within nations. Even though I will use historical analysis and explore the origins of political identities, this book is not aimed at defining political identity in a nominalist sense (as for Smith). Nor is it its aim to explain the emergence of ethnicity and nationalism as such historically. Instead, it shifts the emphasis to hermeneutic understanding of what meanings, narratives and experiences constitute these self-articulations.

The third approach

In reaction to a large part of modern and late modern theory, this book seeks the disillusionment from the “disillusionment”, in effort to reappraise the value and importance of imagination, myth and belief to human existence, showing that it is not and cannot be contradictory to politics. As analysis of Lithuania and other chosen cases will suggest, myth and belief are fundamental not only to real and tangible politics, but also to human existence and identity. I will argue that the process of becoming and of political identity formation cannot be properly understood and theorised by merely focusing on the two aspects of human existence – either an objective political power play (within a historical process) or the intellectualised articulation of identity (abstracted from any historical context).

The third element stems from the appreciation of the finitude of human knowledge and recognition, thus the importance of experience, a-rationality, myth and imagination. Recognition here should not be understood as the act of “figuring out” rationally the actual truth about something inferred, but rather as getting an intuitive glimpse, even if blurred, vague and undefined, into what actually is. Plato’s recognition of “true ideas” in this instance is also understood in this manner.

The theory rests on three assumptions about the human condition. I do not hold these to be the only criteria that define humanity. Quite the contrary, I would argue that, just as with all the rest of ontology, humanity is impossible to comprehend (as in “hold within knowledge”) in its entirety. Nevertheless, these three principles are important in our case. The first and the most important premise, which I hold to be self-evident, is that human beings are imperfect, finite and non-absolute. Humans make mistakes, absolute knowledge is inaccessible to a human being, and human beings are mortal. The fact that no one knows exactly what happens after death is just another proof of human imperfection and the finitude of knowledge accessible to the human mind. Such disposition allows one to dissociate from the positivist ontology without delving into relativist nihilism, instead of questioning the reality of the world, questioning one’s ability to comprehend it.

The second quite obvious claim is that every human being has an existential focal point and is embedded within his or her own existence. One inevitably relates to one’s surroundings from “here” to “there”. What one sees “there” is interrelated with the “here” not only spatially and temporally, but also experientially. This implies that, at all times, all humans are embedded within their particular being, they experience it and they cannot detach from it entirely. Intellectual abstraction and reflection, as a result, is a partially re-cognitive and partially imaginary act, performed by a finite mind, which may be more or less trained and fit for the task. The latter also implies a normal inequality in human capability to recognise or misrecognise as well as an unequal ability to imagine. In turn, this implies the possibility of some perspective being less true than another, which once again helps avoid relativism.

The finitude of the human mind, however, is the reason, which allows for the third aspect of human condition – misrecognition, but also for the existence of the illogical and the paradoxical. Because being happens as it does, and we are embedded within the process, we try to make sense of it by creating finite knowledge, forming truth claims, which are necessary for the orientation. Truth, therefore, is understood not as something that is not a lie but something that is not hidden. And this conception allows for the different articulation of mythology. While a modern concept of ideology is based on the notion of truth that is opposed to falsehood, mythology is based on a notion of truth that is not hidden.

Therefore, the theoretical starting point here can be called a “veil of naivety”, looking at the phenomenology of beliefs and identities at hand and trying to empathically and hermeneutically understand them and people’s relation to them instead of trying to “dispel” the “false beliefs and myths”, supposedly uncovering the “true” underlying economic or power interests. The book tries to understand the experiences of people participating in the political processes as well as symbolical, mythological narratives used to explain them. It establishes that identity formation cannot be adequately understood through means of purely rationalist self-interest either. Neither is it only a result of objective political, social or economic conditioning, adequately and fully measurable in positivist scientific methods, nor a mere intellectual project, understood purely in constructivist terms. Consequentially, politics and political identity formation is seen here as a partly mythological process of human activity, deriving from human needs, such as the need for stability, certainty and belief, and human finitudes, such as the finitude of knowledge and mortality. At the same time, politics and political identity formation are a partial foundation for an authentic human existence, giving people the purpose and explanation for political action.

By political identity I mean being and the perception of oneself or other as a persona or a qualitatively distinct “self” in political interaction. This persona can form and exist at the personal, communal, state or international level. It is historical since it emerges within lived time; it is mutable, as it gradually changes and transforms; it is factual insofar that it is power related; and it is fictional insofar that it is reflected by a human mind. This way it is impossible to define the political or at least the part of it that has to do with identity formation without relating it to humanity. It is a realm of human will, thought and action or participation, relative to the particularity of the situation, yet limited by humanity itself.

Therefore, the importance of human experience to the considerations of political identity requires the reconceptualisation of identity itself. It needs to reflect both the artificiality of political identity and the phenomenological embeddedness of those participating in the process of its recognition. In order to emphasise those two aspects, as well as the organic and gradual shift from inauthenticity into adequacy and “selfhood” through collective experience and political participation, an allegory of a ritual mask will be used, as discussed by Alessandro Pizzorno and Árpád Szakolczai.¹⁰

The derivative concept that this book will introduce is mask-identity, which will be used for tackling the question of authenticity of political identity under the post-Soviet conditions. It will signify the a-rational, intellectual constr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Politics from the Human Perspective
• 2. The Face and the Mask: Lithuania
• 3. Political Images and Identity
• 4. Common Images, Contesting Narratives: Maidan
• 5. Liminality and Sovietism
• 6. Violence, Victimhood and Identity
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index