2026/06/30 by Madina Tlostanova, Epp Annus · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Decolonial Thought and Epistemologies #Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature #Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
paper · doi:10.5281/zenodo.21083142
openalex publication_date 2026/06/30 · openalex created_date 2026/07/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
The article analyzes how different elements of anti-, post- and decolonial aesthetic sensibilities get entangled, transformed and accumulated in the fictional trajectories coming from the former colonial spaces of the Russian/(post)Soviet empire. Taking the examples of Estonian children`s poet of the Soviet period Helvi Jürisson, Kyrgyz prose writer Chingiz Aitmatov, who became a classic during his lifetime, and a young Azeri Diasporic and now exiled Queer feminist author Egana Cabbarli, against the background of other local and global anti/post/de-colonial works, the authors argue against building any clear-cut progressivist successions leading from anticolonial to postcolonial and finally, to decolonial condition, claiming instead for a cumulative effect that allows the later works to absorb the earlier texts, arguments and tensions and put them into play with more recent reflections and conceptual perspectives. This is evident in the example of alienation as the key modernity/coloniality trope, which is perceived not only in a clear cut political or existential sense, but is also complicated and diffused in a relativistic poststructuralist vein, and in recent decades, has received an affective-corporal and New Materialist Anthropocene interpretations. Despite the increasing complexity and diversity, all the analysed texts share a focus on colonial alienation in the literal and figurative sense which allows for tracing their affinity and dialogue and puts fiction coming from the former Russian/Soviet colonies on the global postcolonial map, adding new voices and poetics to the broader chorus of anticolonial resistance.