Novorossiya as metaphor: great powerness and the conservative revolution in the Russian political and discursive space

Abstract

This thesis is focused on the construction of Novorossiya and its relation to great power identity and the conservative revolution in Russia. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the relationship between these three interlocutory discourses in a bid to determine the relationship between Novorossiya and the wider discursive field. Several key questions are answered: of what Novorossiya is an instance; how ideology is inflected in it by conservative revolutionaries; what politics logics are used to move the conservative revolution towards the political and discursive mainstream. The thesis is founded upon a poststructural ontological position and combines the thought of Laclauian discourse theory and TartuMoscow School semiotics of culture to underpin a semiotic model. The concepts of metaphor and metonymy are posited as key theoretical tools of analysis. They are employed in order to explain the conservative revolutionary challenge to liberal hegemony, the chaining of nationalist narratives into a contiguous link with great power identity, and the appearance of Novorossiya as a metaphorical phenomenon. Ideology is unpacked with reference to political logics which focus on forming an analogous relation between discursive and state frontiers. Due to the existence of Novorossiya as a small part of a greater conservative revolution across the Russian political and discursive space, this thesis seeks to provide greater understanding to a widely misunderstood political movement, whilst aiming to provoke a body of work on the new right in Russia.