The Necropolitics of Russia’s Traditional Family Values

Abstract

This article argues that child protection rhetoric rarely applies to all children and that it, in fact, often contains decisions over whose lives are worthy of protection, and whose are not. In Russia, “traditional (family) values” have effectively become state policy, the 2013 federal law “for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values” being the most prominent example of this. The fixation of such “traditional values” discourses on protecting children from “early sexualization” by barring them from access to LGBTQ-inclusive education and care demonstrates that the child on whose behalf this protection is demanded is deemed to be straight, while further examples of child protection discourses also show that innocence is often viewed as the exlusive property of white, middle-class children. Responding to the recent escalation of Russia’s war on Ukraine, this text discusses how the trauma, displacement and death of children in Ukraine reveals the biopolitical core of traditional values discourses.