Hrach Bayadyan E-Book

Hrach Bayadan

• Herausgeber: Hatje Cantz Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: E-Books
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 42

Beschreibung

   Hrach Bayadyan,einer der führenden Kulturkritiker aus Armenien, konzeptualisiert in seinem Notizbuch  » das Postsowjetische «  neu. In Anlehnung an den Soziologen Manuel Castells warnt er davor, dass dieser Begriff allein noch nichts hieße, außer  » Ex «  zu sein und eine Distanz zur sowjetischen Vergangenheit zu besitzen. Vor dem spezifischen Hintergrund der Geschichte Armeniens und seiner jahrhundertelangen Kolonisierung nähert sich Bayadyan der besonderen armenischen Situation und betrachtet sie im Licht postkolonialer Theorien. Der fehlende Dialog mit der Vergangenheit hat die ostarmenisch-westarmenischen beziehungsweise sowjetarmenisch-diasporaarmenischen Unterschiede bisher ausgeblendet.  » Postsowjetisch werden «  stellt demnach das Projekt dar, mit dem Schreiben und Sprechen  » aus dem Inneren «  dieser Verwicklung zu beginnen.    Der Kulturkritiker Hrach Bayadyan (*1957) lebt und arbeitet in Jerewan; er lehrt Medien- und Kulturwissenschaft an der Yerevan State University.      Sprache: Deutsch/Englisch 

Leseprobe

100 Notes – 100 Thoughts / 100 Notizen – 100 Gedanken

Nº059: Hrach Bayadyan

Becoming Post-Soviet / Postsowjetisch werden

dOCUMENTA (13), 9/6/2012 – 16/9/2012

Artistic Director / Künstlerische Leiterin: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Member of Core Agent Group, Head of Department / Mitglied der Agenten-Kerngruppe, Leiterin der Abteilung: Chus Martínez

Head of Publications / Leiterin der Publikationsabteilung: Bettina Funcke

Managing Editor / Redaktion und Lektorat: Katrin Sauerländer

Editorial Assistant / Redaktionsassistentin: Cordelia Marten

Copyediting / Lektorat: Melissa Larner, Alexander Müller

Proofreading / Korrektorat: Stefanie Drobnik, Sam Frank

Translations / Übersetzungen: Narek Bayadyan, Hrachya Stepanyan

Graphic Design / Grafische Gestaltung: Leftloft

Junior Graphic Designer: Daniela Weirich

Production / Verlagsherstellung: Monika Klotz

E-Book Implementation / E-Book-Produktion: LVD GmbH, Berlin

© 2012 documenta und Museum Fridericianum Veranstaltungs-GmbH, Kassel;Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern; Hrach Bayadyan

Illustrations / Abbildungen: p. / S. 1: Students on deck of Chalet III (Farrally Hall) / Studenten auf der Terrasse des Chalet III (Farrally Hall), The Banff Centre, 1956 (detail / Detail), courtesy Paul D. Fleck Library & Archives at The Banff Centre; p. / S. 2: © Hrach Bayadyan

documenta und Museum Fridericianum

Veranstaltungs-GmbH

Friedrichsplatz 18, 34117 Kassel

Germany / Deutschland

Tel. [phone]

Fax [phone]

www.documenta.de

Chief Executive Officer / Geschäftsführer: Bernd Leifeld

Published by / Erschienen im

Hatje Cantz Verlag

Zeppelinstrasse 32, 73760 Ostfildern

Germany / Deutschland

Tel. [phone]

Fax [phone]

www.hatjecantz.com

ISBN 978-3-7757-3088-4 (E-Book)

ISBN 978-3-7757-2908-6 (Print)

Gefördert durch die

funded by the German Federal

Cultural Foundation

We cannot be held responsible for external links; the content of external links is the full responsibility of the operators of these sites. / Für externe Links können wir keine Haftung übernehmen. Die Inhalte der verlinkten Seiten sind ausschließlich von deren Betreiber zu verantworten.

View of the Northern Avenue, Yerevan, Armenia, one of the most striking examples of the massive reconstruction works that took place in the city center during the 2000s.

Ansicht der Northern Avenue, Jerewan, Armenien, eines der auffälligsten Beispiele für die massiven Umstrukturierungen des Stadtzentrums in den 2000er Jahren.

Hrach BayadyanBecoming Post-Soviet / Postsowjetisch werden

Hrach BayadyanBecoming Post-Soviet

It has often been noted that the collapse of the socialist system did not result in research activities that could be compared to postcolonial studies. As Ewa Thompson has observed, “Unlike Western colonies, which have increasingly talked back to their former masters, Russia’s colonies have by and large remained mute.”1 Instead, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, opinions have been expressed from within different research fields regarding the appropriateness of thinking of post-Soviet societies in terms of postcolonial studies.2 Nevertheless, asserting that postsocialism continues to remain a useful category for researchers, Caroline Humphrey notes the existence of a growing gap between Eastern and Central Europe and the Baltic countries on the one hand, and Russia, Middle Asia, and the Caucasian countries on the other.3

In this text, the term “post-Soviet” will be used mainly in connection with the former Soviet Union (SU) republics (as distinct from the Central and Eastern European countries), although there were regional and individual distinctions among them, in particular regarding the duration and forms of pre-Soviet Russian rule. Passing over the issue of whether the term “post-Soviet” is outdated or not, I would like to talk instead about the fact that the post-Soviet situation has not been properly conceptualized. There is a lack of new notions that allow us to articulate, and thus to convey, a credible existence to post-Soviet experiences, and neither have the tools developed by other fields (e.g., postcolonial studies) been used for this purpose in a consistent and productive manner. This essay is an attempt to discuss these and other related issues, but through the narrower focus of a distinct country—Armenia.

Ex-Soviet/Post-Soviet

Published in the second half of the 1990s, Manuel Castells’ three-volume work The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture was widely accepted as the best attempt to describe the economic and social aspects of the information age. One chapter of the last volume is dedicated to an examination of the reasons for the collapse of the SU. The main conclusion drawn is that the Soviet system was unable to assimilate and make use of the principles of informationalism embodied in new information technologies (ITs) that would have ensured the transition to the information age.

Criticism has been addressed to Castells regarding the technological determinism that was presumably inherent in his approach. However, while clarifying the destiny of ITs in the SU, Castells, to use the wording by Jennifer Daryl Slack and J. Macgregor Wise, examines technology “in terms of articulations among the physical arrangements of matter, typically labeled technologies, and a range of contingently related practices, representations, experiences, and affects.”4Thus he reveals that in Soviet society the meaning of IT was defined through, among other factors, ideological pressure and information control. These were decisive obstacles in the path of technological innovation and the diffusion of new technologies, while “the very notion of ‘personal computer’ was objectively subversive to the Soviet bureaucracy, including science bureaucracy.”5