Join the Slavic Literature and Culture Forum for "Modernity with a Smiley Face: Soviet Modernity, Soviet Coloniality" by Dr. Epp Annus (OSU-Newark).
Abstract:
Postcolonial studies, as it has developed through recent decades, has thought extensively about cultural ruptures and unhomely encounters, about the ensuing strategies of accommodation and hybridization of identities, and about the ways colonial power-structures condition subject positions. Following from this tradition, this talk will introduce some basic ideas for Soviet postcolonial studies and supplement these with a specific view from the Baltic borderlands. The particular focus will be on various entanglements of Soviet modernity and Soviet coloniality. Discourses of modernity support an effort to enforce value-systems that are progressive according to the standards of its ideological system. Geopolitical perspectives help to outline the particularity of a colonial orientation: colonialism includes an effort to ‘civilize’ a different culture in a different geographical area, while assigning privileges to the ‘civilizing’ nationality and discounting local traditions that might hamper the exercise of colonial rule.
