Toward the Studies of World Russian Languages, Literatures, and Histories: A Vision of Our Field after the Decolonial Turn

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

This roundtable will reflect on conversations among postcolonial theorists, historians, anthropologists, and literary scholars that have unfolded for nearly two decades within the pages of Ab Imperio, at international Ab Imperio workshops, and at various conference panels.
In 2010, when the editors of Ab Imperio proposed the need for a vision of “post-Russian studies,” it appeared that this idea was unlikely to gain traction in a field that failed to distinguish between political or broader cultural Russianness (rossiiskii) and ethnic Russianness (russkii). The current widespread movement to decolonize our field still often overlooks this distinction, inadvertently reproducing methodological and, frequently, political nationalism. We advocate for a “de-Rusification” of the field in concert with critique of both empire and nation. Our disciplines must abandon their fixation on ethnonational Russianness, either positive or negative. Drawing inspiration from the concept of World Englishes, we envision “World Russians” alongside the study of other pluralized and supranational linguistic cultures of our region—as a framework for studying local varieties of Russian language and literature as distinct legacies of local multilingual cultures, quite apart from any Moscow-centric canon. Likewise, Russian history as a variety of global history must abandon its fixation on Russian polities, past and present.
This vision, borne from postcolonial epistemology, offers a positive – not negative – path forward for reinventing our field in the 21st century. If you find this panel outline overly ambitious, you are precisely the kind of participant whose engagement we seek to encourage!

Sub Unit

• History: Since 1990

Chair

• Ilya V. Gerasimov, Ab Imperio

Roundtable Speakers

• Miriam Finkelstein, U of Konstanz (Germany)

• Kevin Mercer Forsyth Platt, U of Pennsylvania

• Alexander M. Semyonov, Amherst College