Left Perspectives on Decolonization and Geopolitics II: Decolonization or Ethnonationalism? The Ups and Downs of Post-Soviet Decolonial Discourse

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

This roundtable reassesses popular interpretations of the term decolonial in post-Soviet politics, grassroots activism and academia. We examine how its adoption by liberal media and cultural studies scholarship enables terminological erosion of the terms colonialism and imperialism which may align the term decolonization with neoliberal and right-wing ideologies. The lack of interdisciplinary approaches to class in regional studies of the former USSR often gives way to right-wing hijacking of cultural identities. By proposing the departure from cultural identity politics towards more class-conscious approaches, we address the persistent gap between decolonial/postcolonial studies and Marxist analysis. This shift to interdisciplinary approaches to material and social conditions of colonialism is essential for understanding economic oppression, geographic inequality and military conflicts in the Russian Empire, the USSR and its successor states.
Centering the analysis of material conditions, we complicate traditional ethnocultural approaches to Central Asian queer-feminist movements, Indigenous activism, urbanism and artistic networks, revealing complex relations of class, geography, economics and ethnic identity. We explore whether the disregard for class and material conditions of individuals may reinforce ethnonationalist views within these groups.
Finally, we address the widespread conflation of decolonization with decommunization which often accentuates ethnocentric ideologies in order to hide unpopular neoliberal policies and open ways to new forms of economic oppression.
Do these liberal and right-wing cooptations of the word decolonization completely discredit the idea of decolonizing the former USSR or are there ways to challenge them without completely discarding cultural identity and the critique of Russian hegemony?

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Anna Gomboeva, New York U

Roundtable Speakers

• Azhar Dyussekenova, U of Michigan

• Tahmina Inoyatova, Simon Fraser U (Canada)

• Nikolay Raykov Karkov, SUNY Cortland

• Saltanat Shoshanova, U of Regensburg (Germany)

• Marina - Solntseva, U of Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany)