Critique of Belarusian Political Analysis (Part 2)

At 18:00, the next meeting of the regular research seminar of the Political Sphere Institute will take place in the courtyard of the CSI.

Presentation topic: Critique of Belarusian Political Analysis (Part 2): Influence and Consumption

Speaker: Andrei Yahorau
Discussant: Dzianis Meliantsou

Everyone interested is invited. For additional information about the venue, please contact [email protected]

Presentation theses

1. At present, the entire body of texts by Belarusian authors devoted to politics remains undivided by genre. This prevents the normal development of both scholarly criticism proper (criticism of scholarly texts) and criticism of political analysis. The absence of criticism creates a situation in which the “value” of genuine scholarship and high-quality analysis is lowered, because they are mixed with other textual “genres” (teaching and methodological texts, political journalism, ideology, speculative reflections).

2. The basis for beginning a critique of political analysis is the need to correct this situation of mixing.

3. A methodological basis for distinguishing different textual genres may be a scheme that divides the political field into spheres: political science and education, political technologies (methodology of politics?), and political practice.

4. Each of these spheres has different functional relations with the others. Accordingly, each sphere produces different types of texts. Political science and education (scholarly works, educational texts, methodological literature, etc.), political technologies (political analysis, etc.), and political practice (ideological texts, etc.).

5. Genre and stylistic features of analysis. The function of political analysis is to support political decision-making and organize the actions of political actors. Analysis as the marking of a terrain map, a “tablet”. “Good” and “bad” analysis.

6. Genealogy of Belarusian political analysis. The first presidential election of 1994, Maisenia’s analysis, the analysts of the Agency for Humanitarian Technologies (U. Matskevich). An attempt at periodization. The reasons for genre mixing. The role of the “client” and the “payer” in genre mixing.

7. The problematics of critique. The legitimacy of genre differentiation, identifying a corpus of texts for analysis, the “topology” of analysis, the problem of defining quality, the problem of the “first word”, methods and innovations in political analysis, the authentic and the borrowed.