Pristupačnost
The upcoming edition of the Advanced Research Seminar will take place on 9 April at 17h in the lecture room J (5th floor).
Mankurtization of the Baltics: Utilization of Artistic Trope in Conspiracy Discourse
The mankurt figure — a metaphorical image of a memoryless slave originating from Chingiz Aitmatov’s novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years (1980) — has been appropriated in conspiracy theories that depict the Baltic states as arenas for the systematic dismantling of Russian cultural memory. This presentation examines how the mankurt trope, reimagined within Kremlin-aligned narratives, symbolizes an orchestrated assault on collective memory and identity in the region. By exploring this adaptation in Telegram and Facebook threads, we uncover how artistic imagery and cultural memory intertwine to construct compelling geopolitical narratives, demonstrating the enduring flexibility of such tropes in advancing ideological objectives. Rethinking classic semiotic theories on ontological heterogeneity and the meaning-generating function of artistic texts, we aim to demonstrate how the use of this trope lends the conspiratorial narrative multilayeredness, complexity, openness to multiple interpretations, and strategic ambiguity.
About the guest:
Tatjana Menise is a researcher at the Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu. Her postdoctoral position is part of the international REDACT (Researching Europe, Digitalisation, and Conspiracy Theories) project, supported by the CHANCE initiative. She also serves as a lecturer at the Department of Digital Humanities at Riga Technical University and as a researcher in the Language Technology Initiative project. Her research spans various fields, including the semiotics of culture, media cultures, digital discourse studies, participatory cultures, and transmedial communication. In the field of conspiracy theory research, she focuses on the use of artistic tropes and the creative dimension of conspiracy narratives.
