Unmasking the King: The Falsification of the Western Mainstream
UDC 32:303.01
Martyanov V.S. Unmasking the King: The Falsification of the Western Mainstream // Philosophical Reflection on Historiographical and Prospective Tasks of Contemporary Public Law: Collection of Scientific Papers Based on the Outcomes of the First International Scientific Conference to Mark the Centenary of Sergei S. Alexeev (Ekaterinburg, 14 November 2024) / Editor-in-Chief V.N. Rudenko; Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Institute of Philosophy and Law, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Institute of State and Law, Russian Academy of Sciences.– Ekaterinburg: Institute of Philosophy and Law, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2024.– P. 31-45.
The mainstream of social sciences is associated with the formation of a normative picture of modern world societies. Thus, the mainstream belongs to whoever has the greatest influence and opportunity to promote and disseminate his views. In this context, it is difficult to separate any description of the social world and its regularities from the establishment of the very rules of its functioning. The current historical weakening of the West and strengthening of non-Western centres of power are redistributing spheres of global influence. While the non-West is rapidly gaining technological and resource autonomy, residual colonial thinking and imaginary global hierarchies remain more stubbornly intractable. A better world inevitably emerges from a conflict in which the parties lose their former illusions about themselves and their place in the world, take stock of their own resources, and adopt pragmatic negotiating positions on fundamental issues. In this context, the goal of socio-political theories is always not only the search for truth about society, but also the value-institutional leadership of the subjects of these theories in the interpretation of post-Western Modernity. One of the key issues in the global transformation of the mainstream of social sciences, cultural and political economic hierarchies is the legitimisation of long overdue changes in which non-Western participants in conflict interactions are increasingly invested. Consistent opposition to the West implies the role not of a habitually humiliated traditionalist opposition, but rather in an active contestation of Western hegemony in the interests of a broader, fairer and more global version of Modernity. Russian society currently has the capability to serve as a system-forming moral and political subject of such a version of Modernity.
