Discordant Trajectories of the (Post-)Soviet (Post)Colonial Aesthetics

Abstract

After a short critical reflection on what is understood under anticolonial aesthetics and how it relates to the shift from political decolonization to a more epistemologically and aesthetically oriented decoloniality, the essay focuses on the seldom considered anticolonial and decolonial trajectories originating in the ex- and present colonies of the Russian/Soviet empire and post/neo-imperial Russia. It is analysed how these trajectories intersect with and diverge from the predominantly Anglophone and Francophone postcolonial conceptual and theoretical frames and what role is played in this configuration by the state socialist form of coloniality. Its most negative effects consist in recolonization presented as decolonization and the interrupted genealogies of anticolonial resistance and re-existence. As a result, each new generation has to start from scratch, while anticolonial thinkers and artists become enchanted by western (neo)liberalism presented as the only viable alternative to Russian and local authoritarian regimes.