Can the Dispossessed Speak?
Joma Nazpary compares the post-Soviet period in Kazakhstan with Benjamin's angel of history: "The latter," Nazpary writes, "although looking backward, has a sense of movement and direction, because the winds under its wings blow towards the future. The post-Soviet era is rather a whirlwind, which implodes under the pressure of its own violent disoriented forces" (62). The dispossessed of Almaty describe these forces as "chaos" (bardak). The moral community cultivated by the Soviet state has disintegrated into networks of influence and survival, socialist hegemony has been replaced by capitalist domination, and extreme contingency of life has resulted in disruption of progressive time. These changes have rendered the present not only difficult, but often unlivable. The future has become speakable only through narratives about the Soviet past: "In the Soviet time we had our money, our strength, our aspirations. But now we have nothing, we are corpses." (56)
Nazpary's stated aim, giving voice to the dispossessed, does not always work. It is a task not as straightforward as might be implied, a point made by Gyatri Chakravorty Spivak in her essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (1988). Nazpary's analysis would benefit from considering how experiences of the alleged shift from socialist hegemony to capitalist domination are mediated by particular understandings of the self. How are representations of these experiences in the narratives of the dispossessed and the author shaped by particular discursive possibilities and limitations? This is not to suggest that the experiences of the dispossessed are somehow less real or painful because they are discursively mediated, but rather to question the critique of capitalism that is being extracted from the narratives of the dispossessed.
Nazpary's attention to the voice of the dispossessed often brings him to the concept of nostalgia to describe references to the good elements of the Soviet past in the narratives of the dispossessed. This illuminates an interesting and generative tension in post-socialist analytic. Indeed, a particular post-socialist nostalgia seems to be a concept of considerable relevance across the post-Soviet space, as was evident, for example, in discussions at the Soyuz annual meeting in Portland in February of 2004. If nostalgia is a symptom of dispossession and/or a critique of the present (as Nazpary suggests) rather than a pining for the Soviet past, what might be some more enabling analytical terms with which to speak of it? How might we render visible or speakable the post-Soviet predicament in terms that are not derivative of the socialism/capitalism dichotomy?
One of the great strengths of Nazpary's analysis is his contestation of interpretations of post-Soviet chaos as a failure of transition attributable to factors that are external to the logic of free-market capitalism. Nazpary suggests, instead, that chaos is an integral element of the transition itself, and moreover, that chaos is not a synonym of a lack of order. In line with this argument, the author introduces the concept of a "chaotic mode of domination." This concept is useful for two reasons - it contributes to the shaping of a new conceptual terrain for talking about post-Soviet power dynamics, and places the post-Soviet transition both in Kazakhstan and beyond in a broader global context. Indeed, Nazpary notes that similar modes of domination exist in other countries subjected to neo-liberal economic policies. Since Nazpary mainly focuses on the narratives of the dispossessed, in-depth tracing of these translocal linkages is not a part of his project. However, the absence of such an approach marks a considerable weakness in the analysis. An expansion on this aspect, both ethnographically and analytically, would prove very generative. For example, tracing the convergences (while not losing sight of divergences) of certain post-colonial predicaments in relation to global financial institutions is an area of inquiry that could expand the analytical inventory available to scholars considering post-socialist situations (see Mbembe 2001). Such an approach could also have the effect of making the post-socialist analysis relevant beyond the geographic and analytical boundaries of the post-socialist space.
Nazpary's extensive fieldwork among the urban dispossessed in Almaty results in sophisticated analysis of the micropractices of survival, one of the book's major strengths. The dispossessed organize in networks based on kinship and friendship, within which interactions are characterized by reciprocity and trust, whereas relations between networks are governed by the often violent struggles for survival. Astute analysis of these struggles provides insight into various pockets of order and power, as well as into the ethnicized and gendered aspects of these struggles. The author emphasizes that public violence against women and ethnic tensions are dimensions of the current struggles over productive resources rather than manifestations of historical-cultural differences (175). However, Nazpary's account would benefit from a more elaborate consideration of the historically shaped terrain from which these struggles emerge. The author treats relations between the economic, social and political aspects of the post-Soviet chaos in Almaty as if they were, to paraphrase Althusser, "determined in the last instance" - i.e., the effectivity of social and political relations is important insofar as it is determined by the economic struggles. While emergence (or intensification) of gendered violence and ethnic tension is indeed a dimension of the contemporary economic relations, the shape these tensions take cannot be entirely determined by them and is rather overdetermined by convergence of past and current struggles.
Finally, the narratives of the dispossessed deploy top-down notions of power to make claims about the nature of neo-liberal reforms and the instruments of their implementation. In these narratives, government officials, networks of influence and foreigners are described as consolidating in a predatory class of wild capitalism that exercises coercive power over the dispossessed. In other words, the dispossessed have constructed a conspiracy theory. Nazpary argues that this conspiracy theory while "not sophisticated, has a core of truth," and uses these narratives as a springboard for his critique of global capitalism (3). While one may feel compelled to agree with the critical and empathetic stance of the author, this particular transition in his argument is problematic: it posits the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a monolith entity from which the destructive powers of capitalism emerge. Hence examples of activities of the IMF in Yugoslavia and Russia can be used to suggest that similar things transpired in Kazakhstan. It is indeed extremely important to trace commonalities across space and time to contribute to our understanding and critique of globalization, however, it is equally important to trace the distinct micropractices of such institutions and the people that work for them in historically and geographically specific instances. Thus, rather than treating the IMF as a centralized site of power, it might be more productive and radical to treat it as one site among many where power relations are negotiated, outcomes are uncertain, and where institutions and those who work for them are not reduced to one another. Consideration of historical and geographic specificities is key to understanding how such power relations unfold, for they do not take place against an ideal-type Soviet or post-Soviet background, but rather in a historically shaped terrain that opens certain possibilities and forecloses others.
Althusser, Louis. 2001. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Esssays. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Mbembe, Achille. 2001. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. Can the Subaltern Speak? In Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and Interpretation of Culture, Urbana and Chicago: University of Chicago Press.