La aesthesis trans-moderna en la zona fronteriza eurasiática y el anti-sublime decolonial

The article considers transmodern aesthesis in relation to the agenda of liberating the aesthetic sphere from the myths of Western modernity. The author offers a critical survey of the main contemporary Western aesthetic trends vis-à-vis the decolonial anti-sublime as an alternative model analyzed in the article. Specific attention is paid to the mechanism of this sublime, grounded in a pluritopic hermeneutic and a decolonial “community of sense” uniting those who were marked by the “colonial wound”. The article focuses on the decolonial reformulating of usual aesthetic issues, such as the correlation of beauty and aesthesis, the relation of knowledge and art, the moral sphere and aesthetics, etc. Finally, a large part is devoted to decolonial aesthesis of theEurasian borderlands: the territories in the East (Central Asia) and South (Caucasus) of the Eurasian continent which used to be Russian/Soviet colonies and have produced complex instances of decolonial art in the works of Saule Suleymenova, Zorikto Dorzhiev and others.El artículo estudia la aesthesis transmoderna en relación con la agenda de liberar la esfera estética de los mitos de la modernidad occidental. La autora ofrece un resumen crítico de las principales corrientes estéticas occidentales frente al anti-sublime decolonial como modelo alternativo analizado en el artículo. Se presta especial atención al mecanismo de este sublime, fundado en una hermenéutica pluritópica y una “comunidad de sentido” decolonial que une a quienes fueron marcados por la “herida colonial”. El artículo se enfoca en la reformulación decolonial de problemáticas estéticas usuales, como la correlación de belleza y aesthesis, la relación de conocimiento y arte, de la esfera moral y la estética, etc. Finalmente, una larga sección se dedica a la aesthesis decolonial de la zona fronteriza euroasiática, los territorios en el Este (Asia Central) y Sur (Cáucaso) del continente euroasiático, que antes eran colonias rusas/soviéticas, y producen hoy instancias complejas de arte decolonial en las obras de Saule Suleymenova, Zorito Dorzhiev y otros

Of birds and trees: Rethinking decoloniality through unsettlement as a pluriversal human condition

Unsettlement is our current shared pluriversal human condition which is experienced differently depending on our trajectories, privileges and disadvantages. The negative phase of globalization epitmoized in the Covid-19 crisis, threatens to  fold the world into a digital slavery where coloniality would finally stop to be seen as a  ‘problem’ of refugees, migrants and indigenous people or a fashionable term of the academic elite, to be faced directly by each and every. Previously decoloniality has focused mainly on the critique of the intersections of race and capitalism in the production of knowledge and subjectivities. It has seldom addressed the future or ventured outside the position of the colonial difference (exteriority). In the face of the global challenges including the defunct politics and the ultra-right populist turn, as well as the Anthropocene and technological colonization, fragmenting the human species, coloniality needs to be complemented with additional dimensions that would allow overcoming its stand-pointism and refusal to dialogue across the imperial difference with other critical positions. One of such dimensions is unsettlement which is discussed in the article as a promising concept in the agenda for refuturing. Can unsettlement generate new transversal relational solidarity beyond the bankrupt institutions and power structures? Can it launch new communities of change which would inevitably also change ourselves as humans? How would art and fiction react to these tectonic shifts and advance the shaping of the agendas of these communities of change?  The article briefly addresses two possible paths for artistic representations of the unsettlement   - the introspective one struggling with multiple identifications and re-weaving oneself and one’s world anew and a less realized promising way of the positive ontological design fictions and utopias/dystopias transcending modernity/coloniality to imagine an alternative other world. The unsettled ‘birds’ rather than rooted ‘trees’ are likely to be the main protagonists of these fictions helping us to learn that unsettlement can eventually bring a positive sense of the self and/in the world and a new political imagination to refuturing

The postsocialist ‘missing other’ of transnational feminism?

No abstract availabl

The magic of feminist bridging : a mosaic of anti-racist speech bubbles about othering in Swedish Academia

Are feminist coalitions magical enough to survive and endure while questioning and shaking the colonial/racist foundations of Swedish academic knowledge production and the overall Swedish society? Can feminist bridging and collective writing remain a magical process even when grappling with difficult experiences and memories of othering and racialisation? This is a creatively and collectively written article on feminist coalition building, and its importance in thinking, articulating and deconstructing race, racialization and racist structures. More than two years ago, seven interdisciplinary gender studies scholars of mixed ethnic and racial origins, came together to explore our differently situated experiences of disidentifying with Swedish academia and society in a collective we call Loving Coalitions. Against the background of Swedish exceptionalism, historical amnesia of Sweden’s colonial past and present, and the deafening silence on Swedish whiteness and racism, we are sharing our poems, letters, texts and testimonies of racist interactions in Swedish academia and society. While doing so, we discuss how moving away from conventional ways of doing research and experimenting with creative methodological alternatives, such as automatic writing, epistolary formats, poems, fiction, collective memory-work, allow us to acknowledge and embrace our different life backgrounds and academic trajectories as a mode of knowledge production. We hope and believe that our experiences, reflections and ways to resist racism and Othering in Sweden and Swedish academia through alternative coalition building, based on mutual care and love, can be relevant in a Danish context as well

Loving coalitions : seven texts on feminist resistance

In 2021, seven interdisciplinary gender studies scholars of mixed ethnic and racial origins, who have worked/still work in different gender studies centres in Sweden, formed a collective called Loving Coalitions. Our initial aim was to take as a point of departure our different yet intersecting everyday experiences of feeling epistemically, racially, and existentially Othered within Swedish gender studies and society, and start to work towards feminist coalition building. During these years we engaged with creative and artistic modes of knowledge production, such as automatic writing, collective memory-work, poetry, letters, and fiction. In our Loving Coalitions we learnt that by creatively writing about and collectively discussing our experiences and memories of multiple challenging and, at times, impossible border crossings—national, epistemic, racialised, gender, legal, existential—we organically created a safe space in which we can compare notes between our different backgrounds and academic trajectories, and collectively understand and theorize about them in new transformative ways. We are also currently weaving together our discussions, letters, poems, memories, testimonies, and stories into a collective book publication that will celebrate the journey of a beautiful coalition of seven different yet interconnected feminist scholars: Memories that Bridge: Weaving Feminist (Her)Stories in Loving Coalition

Decolonising Museums

"Decolonising Museums is the second thematic publication of L'Internationale Online; it addresses colonial legacies and mindsets, which are still so rooted and present today in the museum institutions in Europe and beyond. The publication draws from the conference Decolonising the Museum which took place at MACBA in Barcelona, 27-29 November 2014 [...]" -- Publisher's website

Escaping a migrant metropolis: Post-Soviet urbanization through the art project Nasreddin in Russia

This article narrates the politics of escape from borders and labour discipline in a post-Soviet migrant metropolis drawing on the art-activism project Nasreddin in Russia. It explores the relation between control and autonomy in urban migrations through a trans-aesthetics: a set of visual and verbal stories weaving together experiences and outcomes of the art project with academic debates on late capitalist urbanization. The encounter of artistic practices and migrants’ embodied, everyday struggles to inhabit the city, it is suggested, has potential for disrupting the disciplinary and exclusionary effects of capitalist transformations and migration enforcement. This is made visible through transient spaces of escape in which the everyday lives and social worlds of migrants, constrained by the precarization of labour and by the multiplication and diversification of bordering practices, are reclaimed through laughter, mobility and care. This point is illustrated by focusing on three such spaces and practices: trickster politics in the housing market, acts of disidentification and care work on the city ‘as a body.’ The article offers a methodologically innovative contribution to ongoing debates on aesthetic political economy, cities and borders and artistic and activist interventions in global cities.Peer reviewe

La aesthesis trans-moderna en la zona fronteriza eurasiática y el anti-sublime decolonial

The article considers transmodern aesthesis in relation to the agenda of liberating the aesthetic sphere from the myths of Western modernity. The author offers a critical survey of the main contemporary Western aesthetic trends vis-à-vis the decolonial anti-sublime as an alternative model analyzed in the article. Specific attention is paid to the mechanism of this sublime, grounded in a pluritopic hermeneutic and a decolonial “community of sense” uniting those who were marked by the “colonial wound”. The article focuses on the decolonial reformulating of usual aesthetic issues, such as the correlation of beauty and aesthesis, the relation of knowledge and art, the moral sphere and aesthetics, etc. Finally, a large part is devoted to decolonial aesthesis of theEurasian borderlands: the territories in the East (Central Asia) and South (Caucasus) of the Eurasian continent which used to be Russian/Soviet colonies and have produced complex instances of decolonial art in the works of Saule Suleymenova, Zorikto Dorzhiev and others.El artículo estudia la aesthesis transmoderna en relación con la agenda de liberar la esfera estética de los mitos de la modernidad occidental. La autora ofrece un resumen crítico de las principales corrientes estéticas occidentales frente al anti-sublime decolonial como modelo alternativo analizado en el artículo. Se presta especial atención al mecanismo de este sublime, fundado en una hermenéutica pluritópica y una “comunidad de sentido” decolonial que une a quienes fueron marcados por la “herida colonial”. El artículo se enfoca en la reformulación decolonial de problemáticas estéticas usuales, como la correlación de belleza y aesthesis, la relación de conocimiento y arte, de la esfera moral y la estética, etc. Finalmente, una larga sección se dedica a la aesthesis decolonial de la zona fronteriza euroasiática, los territorios en el Este (Asia Central) y Sur (Cáucaso) del continente euroasiático, que antes eran colonias rusas/soviéticas, y producen hoy instancias complejas de arte decolonial en las obras de Saule Suleymenova, Zorito Dorzhiev y otros

The postcolonial condition, the decolonial option and the post-socialist intervention

The starting point of my reflections on postcolonialism and its old and new discontents is the idea that postcoloniality should be regarded as a condition, a certain human existential situation which we have often no power of choosing. While decoloniality is an option, consciously chosen as a political, ethical, and epistemic positionality and an entry point into agency. The postcolonial condition is more of an objective given, a geopolitical and geohistorical situation of many people coming from former colonies. The decolonial stance is one step further, as it involves a conscious choice of how to interpret reality and how to act upon it. It starts from a specific postcolonial situation, which can fall into the traditional sphere of interests limited to the British and French colonies, focus on a more typically decolonial Central and South American configuration, or even go beyond both locales and venture into the unconventional imperial-colonial histories of Central and Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Sultanate, or Russia. A mere description of a postcolonial predicament or an analysis of its present outcomes in a concrete locale, then, must lead to the next step of developing an active and conscious ethical, political, and epistemic position whose goal is to decolonize thinking, being, perception, gender, and memory. So it is not enough to call a scholar postcolonial. It is crucial to take into account from the start not only our given objective positions but also who and what we chose to be in our profession and in our life. This understanding of the postcolonial and decolonial realms is rather unorthodox as, instead of stating for the umpteenth time the rather obvious differences in their origination and their links to various types of colonialism in India and Africa and in the Americas, I try to divorce them from their respective genealogies of knowledge and see how relevant these theories are when tested in quite different geopolitical regions such as Eurasia or Central and South-Eastern Europe. The distinction between the condition and the option sheds some light on the main postcolonial flaw in the eyes of decolonial thinkers. It cannot be fixed with a mere addition of the new voices and geopolitical experiences (such as the post-Soviet, the post-Ottoman, or the post-Austrian-Hungarian) to the postcolonial choir. The postcolonial and the decolonial discourses refer not only to different locales but also to different modes of thinking and being in the world, although they frequently overlap with each other: The decolonial thinkers are quite often postcolonial people and the postcolonial scholars in their majority share the decolonial agenda. Still, there are spaces and conceptual tools within each of these discourses that remain opaque for the other, and areas which demonstrate their limitations when applied to a different local history such as the post-socialist postcolonial regions and experiences. What is needed is a radical rethinking and clarification of theoretical and methodological grounds on which the imperial and colonial classifications are made, to problematize the predominantly descriptive and formal approach of the postcolonial studies, in the sense of assessing phenomena of completely different orders based on their formal affinity, such as being empires or colonies, yet often remaining blind to correlational structural and power asymmetries. Along with the Western liberal principle of inclusion (of the old and new others), which has repeatedly demonstrated its paternalistic inadequacy, or maybe instead of it, a different principle should be formulated. It should be based on a revision of the very architecture of power, knowledge, being, gender, and perception. It is necessary not to build into the existing system by merely expanding it with new elements, as postcolonial studies has mostly been doing, but rather to problematize this system as such and offer other options as the decolonial thought has attempted to do in the last two decades