Europeanising Eurasia beyond the Boundaries of European Union: Extimity in Gender as an Export Product

Abstract

Extimity as a socio-psychological phenomenon that was created and matured in European political discourse and social programmes, during the last ten-fifteen years became a product of exportation from European Union to the whole of Eurasia. It is widely depicted by media and many politicians as a part of the worldwide gender equality movement, but in fact it represents a political means of pre-designed formation, attribution, consolidation and transformation of gender social roles and statuses in Eurasia. Such use of extimity is performed according to common mould that presumably reflects a centripetal force which has to additionally unify Eurasian population across a common idea shared by the majority, ultimately the idea of the global unified humanity. In the instrumental aspect, extimity is associated with the re-transmission of neo-liberal gender communicative stereotypes and behaviour models in non-European parts of Eurasia. In the paper, we analyse social and political implications and consequences of such extimity exportation from EU to the rest of Eurasia.