PUBL./CFP- Ab Imperio 2007 Annual Program

Posted by: Sergey Glebov <[log in to unmask]>

The editors of Ab Imperio would like to draw your attention to the 

journal's annual program in 2007 and to solicit manuscript 

submissions. Information on the journal, as well as all contact 

information and guidelines for article submission can be found at 

Ab Imperio editors

Ab Imperio 2007 Annual Program:

The Imperium Of Knowledge And The Power Of Silences

In 2007 the editors of Ab Imperio invite our readers and authors to 

reflect upon the problem of production and functioning of knowledge in 

politically, culturally, and socially heterogeneous polities. In the 

modern world knowledge is a highly ambivalent category. It appears 

simultaneously as abstract scholarly knowledge, stricto sensu, and as 

local (in Geertzian sense) knowledge and mental habits of specific 

people in particular localities; as a self-representation and 

self-description of a certain culture, and as disciplining power that 

not so much reflects as it creates and structures social reality by 

means of its institutional self-reproduction and by acquiring an 

autonomous subjectivity of its own. The editors of Ab Imperio welcome 

various interpretations and methodological approaches to the study of 

the phenomenon of knowledge, which jointly can help shed light upon 

both general problems of epistemology of social sciences in 

contemporary world and particular problems that emerge in the studies 

of the historic past of culturally heterogeneous polities and social groups.

Clearly, we cannot avoid referring to the intellectual influence of 

Michel Foucault upon our views on the functioning of knowledge in 

modern societies (as well as to the limitations of his approaches). 

Next to the problem of naively mechanistic understanding of 

circulation of texts in a society (something that Foucault has long 

been criticized for), we see the problem in that the society Foucault 

describes is absolutely homogenous, more so than even the real Fifth 

Republic. What happens to Foucault's model if it is superimposed upon 

a multinational and heterogeneous society, in which there co-exist 

alternative hierarchies of social status and the subject (or subjects) 

generating discourses function simultaneously in several social and 

cultural dimensions? A factor of special concern here will be numerous 

"gray zones" of silence and elusiveness (and of half-truths) 

effectively limiting the sphere of modern knowledge-power in the 

heterogeneous imperial space.

Within the 2007 program, we are especially interested in a particular 

form of knowledge, namely history as a discipline; or, to be more 

precise, the specifics of historical exploration of empires. We 

suggest looking at how historical knowledge is utilized in 

constructions of imperial legitimacies and power; how historians work 

with imperial legacies and ambivalent memories of the imperial pasts. 

We also suggest exploring how imperial situations influences the 

formation of hierarchies of loyalties and solidarities of social 

identity; how discourses of rationalization and control, having 

changed the context, are becoming transformed into discourses of 

spontaneous collective action. How is it possible, as a matter of 

general theory, to read and understand discourses in a deeply 

stratified multiethnic and multi-confessional society with no inherent 

contradictions to our reading? Whose knowledge, in an imperial 

situation, secures power, and who is the subject of that power?

Finally, within our annual theme we invite the community of our 

readers and authors to reflect upon the growing tendency to describe 

various phenomena of our present world order with the help of the 

category of empire: what makes people return to this seemingly archaic 

category?

No. 1/2007 The Discipline of History and the Punishment of Empire

Political authority and control over past in empire and 

nation;colonization and decolonization of imperial history by national 

historiographies; historians in Russian empire and USSR: experts or 

officials; Russian historians and Slavic Studies in the West: 

paradoxes of core-periphery relationships; whose norm? imperial order 

and national deviation; the laws of history and the history of law; 

historiography as symbolic violence;·whom do you threaten, 

historian?;·configuration of power-knowledge in empire and nation; who 

is the subject of history in empire?

No. 2/2007 The Politics of Comparison

Mandarins of official knowledge, apples and oranges: selecting objects 

of comparison as a political act; choosing the rival in world politics 

as a choice of fate; political connotations of historical 

periodizations; comparative history or the history of mutual 

influences and transfer?; rotation of administrative personnel, labor 

migration, and travel as factors of cultural transfer; comparison as a 

practice of quality assurance of modernization at the individual, 

collective, and state level; empire as a space of comparative 

experiences; comparison as a practice of normalization of local experience.

No. 3/2007 History on Trial

How does history judge?; what is different and what is common in 

historical and legal judgement; banned history; postmodernism, 

juridical expertise, and the problem of objective historical opinion; 

history as a source of legitimacy; historical expertise as legal 

judgement; historical revisionism and the problem of inviolable state 

borders; empire as arbiter: Justice of Peace or tribunal?; 

revolutionary violence: national liberation movement as extenuating 

circumstances; the problem of the universality of legal norms in 

historical judgement; denazification as a problematic model for 

desovietization; international law and historical legitimacies: 

Versailles, Trianon, Yalta, Nuremberg, the Hague.

No. 4/2007 The Future of the Past

The past as a guarantee of a stable future: eternal nation, thousand 

year Reich; forecasting future as selective homogenization of the 

present; long century short century: putting in order the rhythm of 

history; the phenomenon of futuristic schemes: from prognosis toward 

utopia, or the Eros of the upcoming; the imagined and projected 

boundaries; history of federalist projects in East Europe and Eurasia; 

history of constitutional projects; the problem of 

homogeneity/heterogeneity and synchronism/discreteness of the 

historical time in empire; o tempora, o mores! Retrospective 

historicization of moral and social norms; how time heals: the making 

and overcoming of ruptures in historical time. 

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