Between the post-s

Russian theorist Madina Tlostanova describes the ex-Soviet space as a “void”[1] in the structure of global knowledge production, in which the Global South has a symbolic right to postcolonialism and the Global North, to postmodernism. For her, post-socialism or post-communism as a theoretical lens is insufficient to grasp the “postsocialist, postcolonial and post imperial overtones [that] intersect and communicate in the complex imaginary of the ex-Soviet space.”[2] Tlostanova believes that the Soviet approach to creating “its own New Woman in her metropolitan and colonial versions” implied that “the gendered subjects of the ex-colonies of Russia and the USSR are not quite postcolonial and not entirely postsocialist.”[3] However, this specificity, as well as “presocialist local genealogies of women’s struggles and resistance, tend to be erased.”[4]

Postcolonial theory becomes increasingly popular in the post-Soviet contexts as processes of decolonization continue in the former ‘periphery’ of the former USSR.

Seit 2008 fördern die alle zwei Jahre stattfindenden Kongresse des European Network for Avantgarde and Modernism Studies (EAM) das Studium der Avantgarde und Moderne in Europa in einem breiten zeitlichen und disziplinären Rahmen und setzten dabei Themenschwerpunkte wie „High and Low“ (Poznań, 2010), „Utopia“ (Helsinki, 2014) und "CRiSiS" in 2020.