Unpacking the Post-Soviet: Political Legacy of the Tartu Semiotic School

Year 2018, , 31 - 46, 13.06.2018

Andrey Makarychev Alexandra Yatsyk

https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.334965

Abstract

This article sketches out general
approach to using cultural semiotics as a cognitive tool for analyzing
international relations in general and in post-Soviet area in particular. The
authors discuss how the homegrown school of cultural semiotics associated with
the University of Tartu can be helpful for IR studies. In this respect we place
cultural semiotic knowledge in a multidisciplinary perspective and look for
projections of its concepts into the vocabulary of foreign policy. Then we
intend to discuss the Tartu school from a political perspective, thus claiming
that its premium put on cultural issues renders strong politicizing effects.
Ultimately, we use cultural semiotic notions and approaches for problematizing
the concept of the post-Soviet with its conflictual split between reproducing
archaic policies and discourses, on the one hand, and playing by the rules of
the post-modern society, with entertainment, hybridity and the spirit of
deconstruction as its pivots.

Keywords

post-Soviet transition, cultural semiotics

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