Title: Go East, Young Man! Body Politics and the Asian Turn in Putin-Era Cinema
Abstract: The deployment of the East as a discursive means to distinguish Russia from the West has been popular among Russians and foreigners alike for centuries, and it remains highly relevant in today's Russia. While many Western observers and a good number of Russian writers and thinkers have seen this association with the East in negative terms, invoking images of autocracy, violence and under‐development, other Russians have viewed Russia's connection to the East in a positive light, focusing on its traditions of spirituality and communalism and opposing them to “Western” values of individualism and materialism. This article analyzes the Asian martial artist as a corporeal metaphor in Putin‐era Russia, focusing on the role it plays not only in the self‐fashioning of the Russian male but also in the recent reevaluation of Russia's imperial past, and future. The article draws a connection between this cultural reevaluation of the East and Eurasianist revisionist interpretations of Russia's Mongol past and, specifically, the legacy of Genghis Khan. The conclusions demonstrate that Eurasianist theories, largely discarded by Western scholars, are not confined to the upper echelons of the Putin administration but in fact permeate Putin‐era culture.
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-03-11
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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