Beyond the colonial vortex of the ‘West’: Subverting non-western imperialisms before and after 24 February 2022

Russia’s war against Ukraine forces us to interrogate non-western imperialisms. Decolonial and postcolonial scholarships, due to their specific intellectual lineage and geographical anchoring, have been mostly preoccupied—rightly so—with critiquing the ‘West’ and its imperial and colonial projects. Yet these tendencies have led to a deliberate downplaying or accidental overlooking of Russia as an imperial power, as well as other oppressive imperial/colonial regimes outside the places that have constructed themselves as the ‘West’. Linked to this, Eurocentric understandings of the Global North/Global South divide often elide Ukraine both conceptually and politically, along with other countries that have been colonised by Russia in its Imperial, Soviet, and Federal avatars. Thinking through transnational solidarities, as part of our south/south dialogues, we attempt to generate open yet critical conversations between those from the so-called ‘post-Soviet’ space and those resisting non-western imperialisms elsewhere, past and present. In the spirit of decolonial thought and praxis, this dialogue is co-edited by Antonio Salvador M. Alcazar III, Joshua Babcock, Freya Cumberlidge, Taraf Abu Hamdan, Szilvia Nagy, and Izabella Wódzka.

WORKS IN DIALOGUE