Epistemic security and the redemptive hegemony of magical realism

Abstract

This article develops the concept of epistemic security as a form of ontological security. Epistemic security denotes a sense of redemptive hegemony that derives from participation in ritualised schemes of epistemic authority. Such schemes are strategically identified and cultivated by experts turned guardian experts who ritualise knowledge production to generate collective empowerment. Epistemic security troubles the notion of modern expertise and reflexive agency in ontological security studies. Guardian experts embed knowledge formation in tradition rather than methodological scepticism and disavow epistemic violence of their interpretative frameworks. I develop the argument in engagement with ‘magical realism’—a ritualised script of the realist International Relations theory in the pro-regime Russian academic discourse. Through ritual mastery, the guardian experts of magical realism perform ‘magic slippage’ from scientific to sacred frames to render Russia’s war on Ukraine hegemonically redemptive, as a scientifically derived, historically preordained, and politically prudent act of a great power.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to the former and current editors of Cambridge Review of International Affairs, in particular to Italo Brandimarte and Niyousha Bastani for curating this Special Issue, and to the three anonymous reviewers for their thorough engagement and scholarly care. I benefitted from discussing different aspects of this paper with the following colleagues: Felix Ciută, Philip Conway, Thijs Korsten, Dominik Sipiński, Iver Neumann, Raquel Beleza da Silva, Anatoly Reshetnikov, Vladimir Ogula, Beni Kovacs, Adam Pontus, Maria Mälksoo, Catarina Kinnvall, and Jennifer Mitzen. Thanks also to Olga Ogula for double-checking my translations and transliterations, and to Paul Blamire for consultation on theology and the English language. All remaining errors are mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For the complete list of lectures, see Andrey Sushentsov’s Telegram channel https://t.me/asushentsov/57. Accessed 3 June 2023.

2 On the great power narrative as a tenacious ideational anchorage in Russia’s foreign policy see e.g., Reshetnikov (2023); Narozhna (2022); Curanović (2021); Neumann (2015, 2016); Müller (2009).

3 Twitter thread by Anton Barbashin (@ABarbashin) from 19 April 2022, https://twitter.com/ABarbashin/status/1516491940933652481?t=puoFuUBiqSCmipqAdC1A1w&s=03. Accessed 3 June 2023.

4 Lecture by Yevgeniy Minchenko, ‘Информационные операции и нарративы сторон Украинского кризиса’ [Informatsionnyye operatsii i narrativy storon Ukrainskogo krizisa.] Information operations and narratives of the parties of the Ukrainian crisis. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js13eJpMggo&t=4s. Accessed 3 June 2023. This part starts at ca. 45:50. All translations from Russian are my own.

5 Note the use of the concept of epistemological security by Adler and Drieschova (2021), which they define as ‘the experience of orderliness and safety that results from people’s and institutions’ shared understandings of their common-sense reality’ (Ibid, 359). They relate epistemological security to ontological security but do not conceptualise it as such and valorise epistemological security as a condition for rational truth-finding and warranted knowledge production in liberal societies and the International Liberal Order more broadly. Epistemic security conceptualised with reference to redemptive hegemony emphasises instead the potential and enactment of epistemic violence through cultivation of sacred epistemic schemes. See also disambiguation between epistemological security and ‘epistemic security’ (Gertler 2017) understood as ‘the strength of the epistemic claims on behalf of self-knowledge’, cited in Adler (2019, 290).

6 Yevgeniy Minchenko is an expert in political communication. See his profile at https://minchenko.ru/en/about/president/. Accessed 3 June 2023.

7 See profile at https://english.mgimo.ru/people/sushentsov. Accessed 13 May 2023.

Sushentsov is importantly also the programme director of the Valdai Discussion Club,a major regime-oriented think tank established to disseminate knowledge about Russia globally. In cooperation with William Wohlforth, a distinguished scholar of neoclassical realism who served as the scientific director of the Laboratory of International Process Analysis at MGIMO (see https://english.mgimo.ru/news/wohlforth; https://mgimo.ru/about/news/inno/sozdan-nauchnyy-tsentr-lamp/, accessed 13 May 2023.), Sushentsov has pursued a publication strategy internationalising Russian IR (e.g. Sushentsov and Wohlforth 2020; Fomin et al. 2021).

8 On performative ‘leaps of faith’ as connected to routines in ontological security seeking, see also Arfi (2020).

9 The segment starts at 22:15.

10 As an architectural feature, an atlas is a support sculpted in the form of a muscular man. It also evokes Atlas, the Titan in Greek mythology, who was forced to hold the sky on his shoulders for eternity.

11 See, for example, the following clip, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8bX6SPlrWs. Accessed 12 March 2023.

12 This set of demands is now known as the December 2021 ultimatum, see ‘Russia issues list of demands it says must be met to lower tensions in Europe’, The Guardian, 17 December 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/17/russia-issues-list-demands-tensions-europe-ukraine-nato. Accessed 2 June 2023.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xymena Kurowska

Xymena Kurowska holds a doctorate in social and political sciences from European University Institute in Florence and works as Associate Professor of International Relations at Central European University in Vienna. Email: [email protected]