Foreign Agents in Russia - Doria

NKO law, will be loosely followed and implemented, but they would to some degree have effects
onto the Russian social sphere.
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2.5. Additional Theoretical Approaches and Perspectives on Foreign Agents
By fall 2013 I have not found any comprehensive research done on the foreign agents issue in
Russia. Therefore I can make the discoursive analysis without strong pre-assumptions and existing
theories on the exact research subject. It is good for the principles of discourse analysis to have as
little pre-assumptions as possible but there are many existing theories that make pre-assumptions to
the power relations in the discourses of foreign agents. Addingly after conducting my discourse
analysis of foreign agents in the NKO law and news reports, I can further analyze the discourses
found through perspectives of biopolitics, biopower, governmentality, sovereignty, and
critical/neogeopolitics. I will use these concepts in a way that their perspectives partially overlap
each other and therefore do not drift too far away from the focus, yet they still provide some
different aspects on the subject. Addingly theories of my use give plenty of hypotheses that can be
tested in my research. The theories involved are dominantly structuralist.
I will utilize three approaches of the theories on biopolitics in my research. One of the
contexts Michel Foucault (2003) used the term biopolitics was in his description of the shift from
sovereign based governing into the point where sovereign basis of the legitimate exercise of power
was reduced and conducting life emerged the center of politics. Consequently the historical way of
political thinking and practice has gone through revolutionary development that can be seen as
biopolitics. Relevant analysis question I use is how the power is legitimized, what is the subject of
governing, what kind are the institutional power relations revealed in the case of foreign agents and
does the case appear in a new sphere of politics? Addingly I will use two other Foucauldian
perspectives of biopolitics as specified by Thomas Lemke (2011, 34.): Biopolitics as the core in rise
of modern state racism where life will be harnested towards development by disallowing the
unwanted forms of life or supporting one segment of life in the expense of the other. Accordingly
the relative analytical question is: are the discourses of foreign agents favoring or hampering the life
of The third Foucauldian perspective is in the liberal forms of self-governance appearing in social
regulation making the question: what kind of subjectification does the discourses of foreign agents
produce?
Researcher Iver Neumann reflected this alternative rationality or governmentality in
perspective of the Russian other (1996, 1999) and the Russian perspective in international
governmentality norms (2010), which had not followed the trend Foucault had examined –
liberalism – meaning indirect governing. Via the governmentality perspective I will analyze the