Decoloniality in Eastern Europe: A Lexicon of Reorientation

Understanding the decolonial trajectories of Eastern Europe is a difficult task: there are complex global, transnational, transregional and local colonial processes to consider. The terrain of decolonisation in Eastern Europe is constitutively contested by competing visions of role assignments: who is the colonizer, what is the (post-)colony, and to what political projects do these visions belong? As semi-periphery to the capitalist world system with aspirations to the whiteness and civilization granted by Europe, Eastern Europe acquires its dual status of the colonizer and the colonized. How to navigate this space populated by numerous competing narratives and tales?

The authors in this volume offer multiple perspectives on how to navigate Eastern Europe by thinking through the intersecting interpretations of coloniality and imperialism, as well as their effects on anti-colonial, decolonial struggles and forms of contemporary solidarities and forms of life.

This publication does not have pretensions to universalizing or all-encompassing knowledge production; its goal is to create space for a necessary and urgent conversation about decoloniality in Eastern Europe that will continue in volumes to come.

Authors: Ana Vilenica, Ana Sladojević, Piro Rexhepi, Čarna Brković, Ovidiu Țichindeleanu, Manuela Boatcă, Zhivka Valiavicharska, Bojana Videkanić, Veda Popovici, Ivana Pražić, Danijela Majstorović, Jelena Savić, Emina Bužinkić, Łukasz Stanek, Erin McElroy, Zoltán Ginelli, Olivera Jokić.

The publication was created as a result of four realized webinars A Lexicon of Decoloniality in Eastern Europe: How to Decolonise an Art Organization? during 2022, as part of a long-term research project Art Organization initiated by kuda.org in 2017.

You can download the publication for free at this link.