Foreign Agents in Russia - Doria

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chapter.
Despite of the fact that Neumann's analysis of the Europeaness necessarily did not embed
pejorative tone, the internal other in practice can be always described as something incompatible to
the Russian self. However, according to Neumann's oeuvre, the internal other in practice was never
described from official level too distinguishive from unhealthy substance or enemies of the state.
From this perspective it becomes a hypothesis that the idea of foreign agent as a Russian internal
other has inseparable pejorative discoursive content. The amendments to the law on NKOs
definitely do not favor the new internal other because of the legal obligations alone it is less
favorable for an NKO not to be codified as a foreign agent. Hence if the subjects can choose –
according rational theory – they can be expected to direct their conduct apart from the foreign
agents.
3.4.2. Outcomes of the NKO Law: The Russian Self
So why would the Russian governmentality create an internal other in foreign agents at all? Thomas
Lemke (2011, 40) suggests that the sovereign power uses laws to legitimize itself in the divided and
conflicted society it manages. This thesis fits also to the geopolitical view on homogenization of
modern state (John Agnew 1998, 53.): A modern state claims sovereignty all over its territory and
citizens. It creates a strong conceptual division between inside and outside and is attempted to
pursue homogenized nation state due to its apparent domestic efficiency and security against
international competition. Indeed the law on NKOs introduces an internal other to Russianness
clarifying the seperation of inside and outside the Russianness, but according to a thesis of Giorgio
Agamben, exclusion can also contribute to unification of a nation.
Giorgio Agamben(2001, 23-41.) examined the pure field of biopolitics confronted by a
sovereign in situations when a political subject is in the state of homo sacer – bare life without
juridical status of a citizen or nationality. Unlike Foucault, Agamben saw that the sovereign power
and biopower are complementary to each other as the sovereign can rule with the inclusion and
exclusion from the political body. Compared to the introduction of the legal concept of foreign
agents, the biopolitical re-definition of limits of politics is not very extreme in its nature as no
striping of citizen's rights is involved in the law - on the contrary, the law acknowledges foreign
agents as recognized juridical subjects. It does however produce a foreign Russian subject, i.e.
excluding non-Russian other inside the Russian nationality, which is treated as a risk to the social
body and the state sovereignty. Moreover the legal rights of foreign agents are more fragile than
non-foreign agents, because their legal subjectivity is more conditioned than those of non-foreign
agents hence this policy can strip an NKO out from its juridical rights and endanger it to exclusion.