ACADEMIC INSIGHTS: My Response to Olivier’s Radical Construction of “People” in the Face of Ukraine Invasion

Since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24, 2022, many Ukrainians have died and their property has been destroyed. On the side of Russia, a number of soldiers have also died in the main escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which started in 2014. Different narratives from both parties and their allies have continued to follow the invasion and define it in various ways, using various discourses. Laurent Olivier, the Chief Heritage Curator at the National Archeology Museum of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, is one of the academics who have expressed their feelings about the invasion. Olivier recently wrote and published a letter on Academia.edu, an online academic platform that allows academics to upload and share their research works.

The letter is full of positive and negative feelings of pain, sorrow, fear and determination expected from the people of both countries. In this analysis, I would like to respond to the ways Olivier expresses these feelings by identifying how he contests and constructs people on both sides in order to reveal his ideological interactions and the radical contingency of the identified ideologies, as well as the discourses he articulates and disarticulates (Prasad, 2020).

Olivier uses the Russian and Ukrainian people as nodal points for establishing his political hegemony, populism, anti-essentialism, essentialism, structuralism and social hegemony ideologies and radically constructing them (the Russians and Ukrainians) towards making fixed meanings for his invasion, domination, powerlessness, motivational, friendship and collaboration, choice and consequence and demonisation discourses. This aligns with the view of Jørgensen & Phillips (2002), while referring to Laclau & Mouffe (1985), that a nodal point is a privileged sign around which the other signs are ordered; the other signs acquire their meaning from their relationship to the nodal point.

At the beginning of the letter, Olivier interpellates ordinary Russians with political hegemony and populism ideologies, positioning them within social and political fields, before making Russian creators and thinkers as ideological subjects as well, while articulating friendship and collaboration, motivational, choice and consequence, and demonization discourses. Olivier’s movement from one ideology to another reveals his intention of being radical about constructing and contesting “the people” by developing floating signifiers at some point in establishing his discourses and establishing fixed signifiers at another point.

This suggests possible antagonisms that emerge through the radical contingency of discourse (Howarth, Standring & Huntly, 2020) to discern the social, political and ideological logics that Olivier uses to create linkages between different discursive struggles and demands from the Russian people towards rescuing their soldiers as well as Ukrainians who are being killed unjustly (Howarth et al., 2020) through the needless invasion of Ukrainian territory.

Olivier’s political hegemony ideology starts manifesting in the first sentence, “A war of invasion is fought in your name in Ukraine,” where Russians are positioned as ideological subjects and hailed as being part of the soldiers being used for killing powerless Ukrainians. By saying “it is easy to see that the millions of people who are fleeing to save their lives are not your enemies: they are ordinary people—families, women with children,” Olivier infuses domination discourse with powerlessness discourse with the intention of making Russian people, who are his ideological subjects, think about the ordinary Ukrainians who are being subjected to inhuman treatments by the Russian soldiers.

The hailing is further substantiated with his populism ideology, in my view, when he says that “it is clear as well that the bombs and shells which are falling down on the Ukrainian cities are killing the same kind of people: these families haven’t done anything to deserve to die or have someone killed.” In this regard, ordinary Russians need to deploy their inner capacities to save Ukrainians.

Not only the Ukrainians, “And your own people who have been sent there as soldiers, and who are killed as well in this war don’t deserve to die for this.” At this point, Olivier articulates motivational discourse within populism ideology with the intention of making ordinary Russians see their political leaders as anti-ordinary Ukrainians, as well as subjecting their relatives, family members and colleagues (soldiers) to unnecessary death.

With the invasion of Ukraine, Olivier further diffuses the essentialism ideology of Russian political leadership through his anti-essentialism stance, arguing that Russian people do not have enemies in Europe despite the political leaders’ hegemony ideology towards Ukraine. While explaining his anti-essentialism, Oliver aptly positions Russians who have travelled to different parts of Europe, attending academic events and teaching, as his ideological subjects who need to be the vanguards for ending the invasion (Althusser, 2014).

This, in my opinion, is a positive identity construction aimed at attracting the attention of scientists. However, the introduction of essentialism ideology in the midst of political hegemony and populism ideologies, while furthering the articulation of motivational discourse by encouraging scientists to be vanguards, creates multiple identities for the scientists. It positions them as possible subjects who would be used by Russian political leaders to rebuild Ukraine in order to further Russia’s political hegemony. Following Laclau & Mouffe’s (1985) view, I would like to argue that having the ideology (essentialism) and interpellating the scientists further with populism ideology do not have a necessary relation to each other (p. 105). In other words, the scientists are between the undecidable structure and Olivier’s decision to consider them political subjects (Laclau, 1990).

The undecidability and the struggle with the continued articulation of motivational discourse based on the earlier meanings reemerge when Olivier further interpellates the scientists with his structuralism and populism ideologies using inclusionary and exclusionary approaches for articulating choice and consequence discourses. Olivier says, “Today, the issue is not about choosing a camp against another one: Russia against Europe, or Europe against Russia.

The challenge you are facing is much more simple and harder: it is to know what kind of person you are choosing to be and what kind of people you are choosing to belong to. This choice is yours; you have to know that we don’t judge you.” This statement is inherent in the principles of structuralism. Olivier consciously or unconsciously positions the scientists into two camps and expects them to choose where they want to belong if, truly, they want to rescue the Ukrainians and their people from the invasion.

His inability to determine where to position the scientists in the motivational and choice discourses is further compounded (Laclau, 1990) when he says, “But the consequences of your choice are huge and long-lasting—for yourselves and your descendant.” Demonization of the scientists emerges when Olivier constructively leverages his experience with one of the old German people, who says “the most terrible thing was not fighting…” and is reinforced by Olivier while saying “don’t become the zombies of the 21st century; stay with us.” This is a means of hailing the scientists with populism ideology.

“All over, in any places, we just saw, in everyone’s eyes, fear, aversion and disgust for what we were. It was just unbearable. And today, I still see these eyes, everywhere. I am haunted by these people, he said; I am still alive, but I have died there.” This further attenuates the scientists he wants to be the vanguards for saving the Ukrainians and their people and it reproduces his essentialism as well as social hegemony ideologies.

Overall, the ways in which Olivier contests and constructs his demands that ordinary Russians and scientists come to the aid of Ukrainians and Russian soldiers are waved into a chain of equivalence that later results in demonising the same people whom he considered social and ideological subjects by dividing them into different camps and viewing them as political subjects.