ABSTRACT
The post-Soviet continuity imagined by the pensioner Ismoilov nicely illustrates the productive nature of discourse in creating legitimate political order. Such views, widely held in Tajikistan but often understated, indicate the ambiguity of hidden transcripts. On the one hand they can generate the social relations of resistance. On the other, as indicated by Tilly, they produce apathy and resignation. It is the contention of this chapter that the new state-societal relations that have emerged in post-conflict Tajikistan should not be regarded exclusively in terms of either governors versus resistors or leaders versus followers, but rather they should be considered as an intersubjective relationship between elites and subordinates. Governmentality is spatio-hierarchical but also discursively constructed and thus remains fragile and contingent. It faces popular disquiet and cynicism yet also public accommodation and avoidance. Moreover, the two categories of elites and subordinates are themselves not mutually exclusive. Many Tajiks find themselves playing a dual role in this respect: both as an authoritative guarantor of the stability of their family unit and as a subject embodying traditional values of deference to patriarchal authority.
