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• 1 2024-02-27T10:42:30-08:00 Blog Post 2: Sergei Kurekhin and Over Identification 5 Over-identification, Subversive Affirmation, Styob plain 2024-02-27T10:53:38-08:00

  Perhaps one of the most exemplary forms of over identification seen this week was the work of Sergei Kurekhin. Although his work spanned various genre and mediums, his presentation on the television program The Fifth Wheel is striking. On May 17th 1991, Kurekhin presented the idea that Vladimir Lenin was, actually, a mushroom. This presentation was broadcast nationally and, as outlined in Alexei Yurchak’s article regarding the incident, for an hour Kurekhin presented his theory as fact using various forms of evidence like photographs and film footage to present his argument as scholarly. 

  Those watching at home were already primed to believe that they were being told because, as Yurchak writes, the program was “concerned with historical and cultural events in the Soviet past and present” (Yurchak 307). The viewers had no reason to believe that anything on the show would be fabricated as it was presented. The host of the show, Sergei Sholokov was a journalist and it is hard to imagine that many of the viewers would question the legitimacy of the show’s guests, so when Kurekhin presented his evidence that Lenin was a mushroom, there was already an air of believability because of the medium. This legitimacy was furthered by Kurekhin leaning into the image of an expert. The Soviet Union was founded on a philosophical ideal (how well they managed to stick to that is another matter) and would later go on to tout the might and power of its minds. Science factored heavily into the image of the Soviet Union, so by positing himself as a scientist and a scholar, Kurekhin is heaving playing upon or over identifying with the image of authority in the Soviet Union. 

  Further, as Yurchak writes “Had Kurekhin been speaking of anyone else, his words would easily have been dismissed as a joke. But Lenin! How could one joke about Lenin? Especially on Soviet television. Audiences could not help but attribute some credibility to the revelation” (Yurchak 309). This reality creates a strange situation for the viewers. Despite hearing something they know to be absolutely false, because the presentation is about Lenin, they are not initially able to see the presentation as false. Instead of being offended or troubled by a lie and a joke about Lenin, it is unthinkable that anyone would or could do that, especially on state television. Coupled with Kurekhin’s extremely serious delivery, this created a serious disruption for many people in the Soviet Union, exposing the absurdity of the moment. 

  Interestingly enough, Kurekhin’s own work would go on to expose the faults or dangers with over identification. Despite the power of the Lenin Mushroom stunt, Kurekhin would continue to try to expose the hypocrisy and paradox existing within the Russian state, but this time he would do so by teaming up with Akelsandr Dugin. While Kurekhin rarely exposed whether his beliefs were true or not, his over identification with the Anti-Western politician’s ideas would eventually be picked up by the state and used to separate itself from a Western sense of democracy. While Yurchak shows how this action exposed the paradoxical nature of Russian politics at the time, as Kurekhin was criticized from both sides of the political spectrum for the same exact thing, when does over identification simply fade into identification?

  Perhaps a comparable example could be found in Arnes and Sasse as they detail a 1989 action. At a performance given by Laibach, Peter Mlakar gave an exceeding nationalist speech as an act of over identification, but to ensure that this speech would not be taken at face value, Mlakar used some German phrases to highlight the fascistic nature of the speech. This incident highlights that there is a real concern that over identification can be taken seriously and not subversively by an audience, for had there not been phrases in German, many audience members may have simply agreed with the extreme nationalist speech. The subtlety of over identification can be necessary in many respects as over identification is often used in climates where outright political dissent is not possible and as Arnes and Sasse write, “Over-identification makes explicit the implications of an ideology and thus produces such elements that may not be publicly formulated in order for an ideology to reproduce itself” (Arnes and Sasse 449), but in Kurekhin’s case, certain narratives furthered by over identification can be co opted by the state and, when they become the national narrative, they lose their resistant quality. It doesn’t seem fair to entirely blame Kurekhin for the Russian’s further authoritarian turn as it disidentified from Western democracy, but it is notable that Dugin still holds some social and political relevance, even if he is still on the extreme end of the political spectrum.