Le Recueil Turkestanais de Mežov. L’utopie d’une somme exhaustive des connaissances sur l’Asie centrale

Abstract

Focusing on the relationship between power and knowledge in a colonial situation, this study analyzes the history of the Turkestan Collection (Turkestanskij sbornik) commissioned from 1867 on by the first governor-general of Turkestan, K. P. von Kaufmann (1818–1882). Created in St. Petersburg by V. I. Mežov (1830–1894) and developed during three generations of compilers, this work has reached a total of 594 volumes. The topics analyzed are the political issues related to the preparation of this colonial library, the terms of its use, and its impact on how Central Asia had to be governed. This history allows to specify the cultural technologies of power and which kind of mechanism contributed to creating and structuring a knowledge which was politically used in the Russian imperial context; lastly, it highlights the process by which this knowledge is presently re-appropriated by the post-Soviet Central Asian States.