SCIENTIFIC LECTURES IN AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES

Mykola Riabchuk, a leading researcher at the Department of Political Culture and Ideology of our Institute, gave lectures at US universities.

The topic of the scientists’ report: “Imperial Knowledge and Anti-Colonial Wars: What the Russo-Ukrainian ‘Conflict’ Teaches Us”. M. Riabchuk spoke with it on November 4 – at the Southern Methodist University (Dallas, Texas); November 10 – at Princeton University (New Jersey).

Southern Methodist University (Dallas, USA)

“Imperial knowledge” was described by the speaker (according to Edward Said) as a system of narratives aimed at silencing, undermining and provincializing the subjugated nations, making them voiceless and almost invisible on the international scene, insofar as the empire monopolizes the authority to speak and act on their behalf. The Russian Empire, the scientist emphasized, has created and disseminated this “knowledge” for several centuries with the help of powerful state institutions, transforming it into “international” knowledge,  adopted in Western media, academia and mass culture and transformed into “common knowledge” and therefore unquestionable “truth” . As a result, the West got used to looking at Russia and its possessions through the prism of that “knowledge”, through “Russian eyes”, not understanding many important things and not reacting to them properly.

Princeton University (Princeton, USA)

The degradation of Putin’s regime into a fascist dictatorship and his genocidal war in Ukraine took place, to a large extent, thanks to the self-poisoning of the West with that “knowledge”, and thus self-blinding. Today, we finally have to radically revise that “knowledge” – within the framework of the belated decolonization of Western mentality and institutions.