ABSTRACT
The conclusion summarizes the five main pillars of the argument presented in the book. They are as follows: 1) the mediatized status of the world in which Russia is projected entails an unprecedented level of horizontal networking in which the state is but one player divided into multiple subcomponents, meaning that images of Russia are projected globally via disparate assemblages of actors characterized by maximum ideological and cultural heterogeneity; 2) Russia – the object of projection – itself is prone to fragmentation into a series of layered meanings whose apparent polarity disguises relationships of mutuality, symbiosis, imbrication, and mirroring; 3) the looping feedback patterns described by the projection process exhibit dialectical rather than circular properties, demonstrating that recursive nationhood involves sharp contestation and polemic; 4) the specific features of Russian recursive nationhood derive from the concurrence of Russia’s most recent, digital phase with that of the history of post-Soviet nationhood itself; 5) ‘information war’ responses to Russian actions assuming a unified state apparatus projecting a stable, singular Russia harnessing global media affordances to its sinister ends must therefore be rethought. The book ends by exploring the broader implications for recursive nationhood through analysis of the award-winning HBO television drama, Chernobyl.
