Critique of Belarusian Political Analysis

On 2 December 2009, at 18:00, the regular research seminar of the Political Sphere Institute will hold its next meeting in the courtyard of CSI.

Presentation topic: “Critique of Belarusian Political Analysis: Foundations and Methodology”.

Speaker: Andrei Yahorau; discussant: Andrei Kazakevich.

All interested participants are 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 undifferentiated in terms of “genre”.

This prevents the normal development both of scholarly criticism proper (criticism of academic texts) and of the critique 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 become 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.

The methodological basis for distinguishing different textual genres may be provided by 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 (academic works, teaching texts, methodological literature, etc.), political technologies (political analysis, etc.), political practice (ideological texts, etc.).
5.

Genre and stylistic features of analysis.

The function of political analysis is to support the adoption of political decisions and the organization of actions by political actors.

Analysis as the marking-up of a map of the terrain, a “field tablet”. “Good” and “bad” analysis.
6.

The genealogy of Belarusian political analysis.

The first presidential election of 1994, Maisenia’s analysis, the analyses of AHT (Ul.

Matskevich).

An attempt at periodization.

The causes of genre mixing.

The role of the “client” and the “payer” in genre mixing.
7.

Problems of critique.

The legitimacy of genre differentiation, defining the corpus of texts for analysis, the “topology” of analysis, the problem of determining quality, the problem of the “first word”, methods and innovations in political analysis, the authentic and the borrowed.
8.

The place of AHT texts in Belarusian political analysis.