Taras Bulba Meets John Wayne: Frontier Mythos and the Civilizing Project

Aaron Derner, None

Both the pioneer settler of the United States and the Cossack of the Russian frontier simultaneously embody the leading edge of the “civilizing” project and an antagonistic resistance to the settled influence of the metropoles in their respective states. Both groups claim an overrepresented mythical presence that seeks to reify violence, both as a tool to exert “civilizing” influence on native “hostiles” and as a romanticized means of resisting tyranny exerted from the metropoles. Moreover, political ownership of each group plays a pronounced role in structured identity in both politics and broader social roles. Examining the evolution of these identities, both historically and as they are represented and distorted in literature and cultural discourse, is a pathway to improving understanding of how colonial identities continue to influence broader political and social norms. Examining the origins of the histories, and in particular false histories, and popularized myths surrounding each group, alongside the pathways these narratives carved in the socio-political world, serves to elucidate the social power inherent in establishing and controlling claims to a form of nativism. While seemingly divergent, the mythological identity of the Cossack alternating between enemy of empire and its greatest ally, and stalwart white settler of the American frontier as a fixture of American political and social identity, reveal the unified persistence and social power of the colonial moment in contemporary politics.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 199. Violence and Politics