Madina Tlostanova

Border thinking and disidentification: Postcolonial and postsocialist feminist dialogues:

In the context of the continuing dominance of delocalised Western feminist theoretical models, which allow the non-Western and not quite Western ‘others’ to either be epistemically annihilated or appropriated, it becomes crucial to look for transformative feminist theoretical tools which can eventually help break the so-called mere recognition patterns and move in the direction of transversal dialogues, mutual learning practices and volatile but effective feminist coalitions. Speaking from the position of postcolonial and postsocialist feminist others vis-a-vis the dominant Western/Northern gender studies mainstream, and drawing on examples from a broad range of social contexts (from the Armenian queer social movement to a recent Indian gang rape controversy), the authors of this article address the validity of two such transformative feminist tools: border thinking that operates on a more general theoretical level, and disidentification that offers a more praxial operational realisation of the border principle.

TRANSCENDING THE HUMAN/NON-HUMAN DIVIDE: the geo-politics and body-politics of being and perception, and decolonial art

Abstract This article focuses on the analysis of the geo-politics and body-politics of being, and perception as the key concepts in the decolonial option grounded in the spatiality and corporeality of our cognitive and perceptive mechanisms. Revived spatiality refers in this case not only to a physical space that we inhabit but also to our bodies as specific spatial entities – the privileged white male bodies or the damned, non-white, dehumanized and often gendered and sexualized bodies from the underside of modernity. The article presents a decolonial interpretation of the human/non-human binary aimed at rethinking the fundamental modern/colonial division into anthropos and humanitas and the subsequent animalization of large human groups. The main questions are then what does it mean to be animalized by and in modernity and what ways out are possible, desired and attainable for the dehumanized others? The main goal of the article is to further question liberal Western humanism from a decolonial perspective, without yet dropping this concept altogether, and considering instead another humanism model suggested by Sylvia Wynter. Contemporary critical anti-humanist and “other humanism” theories often find a much more accurate and immediate realization through artistic metaphors and activist art projects than traditional theory, problematizing the border between the human and the animal, the man-made and the natural, the individual and the communal. Therefore, the article dwells at some length on one such project balancing between art and critical anthropology – the works of the Northern Caucasus decolonial artist Taus Makhacheva.

Decolonizing the Postsocialist Childhood Memories

My childhood nostalgia is not in any way connected to socialism. Rather, it refers to affects that are maximally distilled from any ideological elements. My Proustian memory avalanches take me back to the Caucasus, to its fascinating nature, and to its local people, traditions, and culture. I remember our family trips to the mountains, the taste of fruit impossible to find today, the smell of the blooming cherry plums in the old park where my father secretly showed me the gone-wild old trees from the indigenous Circassian forest gardens, the shady spacious flat with thousands of books, and me sitting under the glass coffee table and leafing through an impressionist art catalogue.

Decolonial Art in Eurasian Borderlands

Tlostanova traces the specific features of decolonial art in Eurasian borderlands – the former and present non-European colonies of the Russian/Soviet empire. The chapter focuses on the evolution of decolonial sensibilities, optics, and poetological devices in the arts of the Caucasus, Central and partly North-Eastern Asia in the last several decades, from the ethnic renaissances of the late Soviet years to radical actionism and tongue-in-cheek conceptualism of contemporary decolonial artists. Along with a wider panorama of mostly dissident Eurasian authors focusing on the issues of dehumanization, the unhomed condition, and the miseries of self-Orientalizing, Tlostanova offers three more detailed case studies of the representative figures in decolonial art of the Eurasian borderlands–Yerbossyn Meldibekov, Saule Suleymenova, and Zorikto Dorzhiev.

Afterword: An Open Finale

Tlostanova traces the possible directions for postsocialist and postcolonial dialogues, in the context of the quickly changing global situation which continuously generates new cohorts of dispensable lives facing the necessity of building into the victimhood rivalry paradigm. Pointing out the danger of appropriation of decolonial critique of modernity by neoimperial and ultra-right agents, Tlostanova claims that postsocialist subjects are losing to their postcolonial counterparts in the modern/colonial rivalry and both remain largely inattentive to any possibilities of mutual coalitions. However, there is a growing number of authors marked by decolonial optics and addressing this problematic in fiction and art. This leaves open the possibility for alternative re-existence models in a hopefully more just and fair world of the future.

Postsocialist/Postcolonial Tempo-Localities

Tlostanova tackles various creative representations of the intersections of the postcolonial and postsocialist experience seen through the prism of the basic ontological constants of time and space and in the context of the present-day theoretical spatial turn. Critically analysing the well-known spatial-temporal models of chronotope (Bakhtin) and heterotopia (Foucault), the chapter introduces a decolonial concept of tempo-locality touching upon those aspects of the human condition and its artistic representations which have been left out in most Occidentalist theories. Drawing on the vast number of examples from postsocialist fiction, documentary and feature films, and contemporary art, Tlostanova focuses on such specific post-dependence tempo-localities as transit, in-betweenness and border, the postcolonial/postimperial city, the tempo-local dimensions of postcolonial/postsocialist wars, and post-apocalyptic and post-idyllic temporal-spatial models.

Decolonizing the Museum

Tlostanova presents a survey of contemporary tendencies in decolonization of museums as institutions for the production and distribution of particular knowledge. Summarizing the main ways of museum decolonizing such as questioning of the habitual subject–object divisions and the zero point epistemology embodied in the representation and viewing positions, the essentialist readings of history and culture, the enforced progressivism and Orientalism, the chapter dwells on the recent examples of successful museum interventions such as Fred Wilson’s and Pedro Lasch’s works and Okui Enwezor’s curating strategies. This prepares the ground for the main intervention – a comparative case study of two recent exhibitions related to the Caucasus culture. One of them sustains the neo-imperial attitudes while the other is clearly decolonial.

Tricksters, Jesters, Qalandars

Tlostanova considers the main features of the recurrent characters of postsocialist/postcolonial fiction and art within the trickster archetype. In their leaking identities, multiple metamorphing selves, and migrant sensibilities, they graphically embody the shift from resistance to re-existence. A specific kind of trickster at the intersection of postcolonialism and postsocialism is the qalandar – an Eastern version of the Western jester. Drawing from the examples of contemporary art, cinema, theatre, and fiction, the chapter focuses on rethinking such key categories of postcolonial theory as mimicry and metamorphosis. At the postcolonial/postsocialist intersection, marked by the imperial difference, mimicry is redoubled and metamorphosis is reversed as manifested in the case studies of the Ilkhom Theatre company, Taus Makhacheva’s art, and Andrey Volos’s fiction.

Coloniality of Memory at the Postcolonial/Postsocialist Juncture

Tlostanova analyses coloniality of memory and considers different ways of its decolonization presented in Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit, Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, Alexey German’s Khrustalyov, my Car, Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory, and Jasmila Žbanic’s Grbavica. Focusing mostly on works centring on political/sexual rape, the chapter regards the coloniality of memory as an integral part of the systemic violence repressing people’s remembrances and violating their bodies and minds. Tlostanova addresses reciprocal violence and revenge, and the lack of repentance and responsibility preventing people from coping with the traumas of the colonial/totalitarian past. Gender difference plays an important part in the traumatic political rape narratives analysed in the chapter: the women’s interpretations are more life-asserting, healing, and leading to re-existence rather than despair and aggressive objectification.

Introduction: A Leap Into the Void?

The introduction analyses how and why a shift in the interpretation of the postsocialist human condition has taken place – from the end-of-history discourse situating the ex-second world in the void, to postcolonial and decolonial readings, echoing or criticizing the previous area studies rhetoric. The core issue here is the reverse progressivism enforced on the postsocialist people through ‘starting from scratch’ models. Tlostanova critically engages with interpretations of the postsocialist condition as found in post-Cold War studies and post-dependence studies. The introduction explores how applicable are postcolonial theory and thought studies to the analysis of the postsocialist space and its people, and what trajectories beyond the void can be offered.