The Creation of an Imaginative Caucasian Geography

Abstract

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Strangers in a Strange Land

“…This brings us to imaginative geographies. Beyond the pale of this somewhat triumphalist rehearsal of liberal self-understandings of Western modernity, we are in the territory covered by Said's discussion of "imaginative geographies" in Orientalist discourse (1978, see also the important discussion in Asad 2003, chapter 5, with reference to the Russian Empire, see for example Layton 1986Layton , 1994Jersild 1999, Khalid 2000. In sharp contrast to the rather self-involved literature on social imaginaries, the literature on Orientalism instead emphasizes the historically crucial role played by "imaginative geographies" of difference and alterity in modern social imaginaries.…”

“…This is also a familiar critique from Russian intellectuals of the applicability of the term colonialism, Orientalism, or even imperialism to the Russian context (for a lively recent debate between Russian and Western scholars on this issue, see Grachev andRykin 2007, Morrison 2007). For a debate about the applicability of Orientalism, see Khalid 2000, Knight 2000and Todovora 2000; for authors that assume, as I do, its general applicability mutatis mutandis to the Caucasus, see Layton (1986Layton ( , 1992Layton ( , 1994Layton ( , 1997, Jersild (1999Jersild ( , 2002. Naturally, colonialism (like Orientalism and imperialism) is a term that, like essentially every other term of comparative analysis, eludes easy and unchanging definitions except by ostension, but consider how much more elusive than these is the invariant core of term "modernity," a term which is nearly always defined either extremely abstractly or by simple ostensive definition (a long list of things that seem to go together).…”

Moyen-Orient, Caucase et Asie centrale: Des concepts geo´politiques a ¤ construire et a ¤ reconstruire?

“…Depuis le XVIIIème siècle, où sous le règne de Catherine II, l'avancée russe dans la région pris de l'ampleur, un ensemble d'oeuvres romanesques, poétiques ou musicales mettant en scène la zone du 'Caucase' a puissamment contribué à en forger et à en xer l'image dans la conscience russe. 34 Des artistes comme Pouchkine dont le critique Belinsky dira qu'il a crée le 'Caucase', 35 Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, Lermontov, Tolstoï, Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaïkovsky ou Moussorsky, pour n'en citer que quelques-uns, ont ainsi puissé dans la région leur source d'inspiration . Leurs oeuvres ont à leur tour façonné l'image du 'Caucase' avant de la graver durablement dans la conscience russe comme terre de mythe, de poèsie et de légende.…”