Madina Tlostanova

Global coloniality, the imperial difference, and the trajectories of the former socialist East European nations

The second lecture of this series of special lectures dedicated to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine will address how global coloniality, a concept that in itself was a product of the end of the Cold War and the pessimism of the global left, has affected the locales that are usually left out of the most discussions of imperial-colonial relations – the Eastern European nations at the crossroads of different imperial rivalries and clashes. In particular, we will address the issue of the imperial difference that helps to better understand the Eastern European predicament. We will also touch upon the darker colonial side of the state socialist and particularly Soviet modernity with its internationalist rhetoric and colonialist logic, and the trope of recolonization presented as decolonization. Finally, we will try to make sense of the postsocialist neoliberal realities, and the ways Eastern European nations imagine their survival and refuturing.

About Madina

Madina Tlostanova is a decolonial feminist verbal artist and professor of postcolonial feminisms at the Department of Thematic Studies (Gender studies) at Linköping University, Sweden. She focuses on decolonial thought, postsocialist human condition, artivism, feminisms of the Global South, critical future studies. She has authored twelve scholarly books and 285 articles translated into several languages.

Her most recent books include What Does it Mean to be Post-Soviet? Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire (Duke University Press, 2018), A New Political Imagination. Making the Case (co-authored with Tony Fry Routledge, 2020), Деколониальность знания, бытия и ощущения (Decoloniality of knowledge, being and sensing). Almaty (Kazakhstan): Center of Contemporary Culture Tselinny, 2020 and a coedited volume (with Redi Koobak and Suruchi Thapar-Björkert) Postcolonial and Postsocialist Dialogues. Intersections, Opacities, Challenges in Feminist Theorizing and Practice. Routledge, 2021.

Madina Tlostanova

About Madina

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