A Manifesto of a Postcommunist, Poststructuralist Researcher

Abstract

This paper represents a reflective account of a recent Cambridge University graduate, who critically assesses her successes and struggles in establishing herself as a social science researcher in Western academia. Reflecting on her various (sometimes conflicting and sometimes, in a paradoxical way, complementary) identities, the author explains how her personal oscillation between and dissatisfaction with two systems of thought and patterns of socialization was translated into her research agenda and theoretical/methodological standpoint. Committed to a non-Euro/Americo-centric approach to research, the author views and adopts a poststructuralist perspective as a more powerful explanatory tool, which better accounts for the emerging hybridities, uncertainties, and oscillations that increasingly characterize everything that used to be covered by the term "Soviet": countries, societies, identities, and—of particular relevance to the problematic raised in this paper—intellectuals. The author concludes by problematizing predominant "Western" analytical knowledge traditions, and calling for a new form of political engagement, ethics, and critique as these were once envisaged by Foucault.