Decolonization of Knowledge on and in Eastern Europe 3700-ISSC-DKEE-RB

Today the term “decolonization” appears often in academic studies, generally referring to resistance against imperial hegemony. In Ukraine, insofar as the term is used at all, it means expelling the Russian invader and uprooting symbols of historical Russian/Soviet domination of politics, society, and culture (derussification). In Belarus, especially since 2020, the opposition has adopted traditional Belarusian cultural symbols in the struggle to resist Lukashenka’s autocratic rule and his support for Putin’s invasion. In Poland, “decolonization” is at best a contested term, largely because of popular distaste for the implication that Poland has ever been a colony.

This course proposes decolonization as an analytical category to help understand the current experiences of societies in Eastern Europe that were dominated historically by Russian/Soviet power - military, economic, political, and cultural. Our focus will be on the cultural effects of physical control and imposed administration. We will examine the literature on coloniality, which is a subset of the wider scholarship on decolonization. Writings on coloniality begin with the premise that the colonial condition does not automatically evaporate with the departure of colonial rule. It is important, therefore, to examine the lingering effects of imperial cultural hegemony on the intelligentsia and, for that matter, on popular culture. The colonial administration enforced the use of certain languages, symbols, habits, and practices, which gives rise to pragmatic questions: How to unlearn these habits? How to create new understandings of the world and new practices for their development and dissemination?

Put this way, the issue is one of epistemology – the shared framework that makes possible the articulation of perspectives on the world. Along with that comes the issue of the production of new knowledge. How can research and writing advance understanding of the world that is unburdened from the imperial hangover and, instead, opens doors to authentic and open new analysis of the contemporary world and its potential.

The methodological approach will be interdisciplinary and comparative. The course will employ studies of the history, sociology, literary and cultural studies of the societies of Eastern Europe. We will also make comparisons with societies in other places and other times, to learn from them but also to test the conceptual flexibility and effectiveness of our approach.

Topics

We will begin with basic premises of the coloniality literature
• Positionality: Knowledge is never universal. It is always from somewhere. We must ask not only who produced it, but for whose benefit, and at whose cost.
• Cultural colonialism (coloniality) is the dark side of modernity. “Civilizing missions” throughout history have justified their ruthless conquests by claiming to enlighten minds and raise living standards.

To help visualize cultural resistance to empire, we will examine struggles over language, historical monuments, architecture, and cultural productions such as theatre performances.

Then we will turn to three cases of national academic discourse over decolonization: Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland to survey the current condition and the prospects for new developments.

Finally, we will consider the possibility that Eastern Europe is pincered in a sort of “colonization scissors” – on the one side, by cultural pressure from the East but also, on the other side, from the West.

Class meetings

Classes meet at the Kolegium Artes Liberales, 72 Dobra, on Thursdays, 14:00 to 16:30, unless otherwise noted. Each of the ten meetings counts as 3 contact hours, which makes a 30-hour semester-long konwersatorium. In-person consultations are scheduled for 30 minutes each, by special appointment. Consultations are an integral part of the course curriculum, which each student will arrange individually with the professor.
Dates of class meetings (all in-person, except May 7)
1. February 26
2. Individual consultations by appointment, February 27-Mar 4
3. March 5
4. April 16
5. Individual consultations by appointment, April 17-22
6. April 23
7. May 7 via Zoom
8. May 14
9. Individual consultations by appointment, May 15-20
10. May 21