9 The postcolonial condition, the

decolonial option, and the

post-socialist intervention
Madina Tlostanova

The starting point of my reflections on postcolonialism and its old and new
discontents is the idea that postcoloniality should be regarded as a condi-
tion, a certain human existential situation which we have often no power of
choosing. While decoloniality is an option, consciously chosen as a politi-
cal, ethical, and epistemic positionality and an entry point into agency. The
postcolonial condition is more of an objective given, a geopolitical and geo-
historical situation of many people coming from former colonies. The deco-
lonial 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 postcolo-
nial 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 decolo-
nize 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 ump-
teenth 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
166 Madina Tlostanova
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 classifica-
tions 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 inclu-
sion (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.

Global coloniality and the postcolonial condition

The decolonial thought offers a number of categories and ideas which
could take the imperial-colonial complex in its diachronous and synchro-
nous dimensions out of its postcolonial impasse. This refers particularly
to the concept of the global coloniality (Tlostanova and Mignolo 2009),
which is not the same as colonialism or postcolonialism. Colonialism is
a historical phenomenon, while coloniality (Quijano 2000, Maldonado-
Torres 2007) is its outcome in which we all reside. Decolonial option does
not accentuate the historical description of (neo)colonialist strategies but
rather the long-lasting ontological, epistemic, and axiological traces left
after any colonialism seems to be a matter of the past. The global colonial-
ity (of power, of being, of perception, of gender, of knowledge, of memory)
is always manifested in particular local forms and conditions, remaining,
at the same time, a connecting thread for the understanding of dissociated
manifestations of modernity.
Coloniality is an overall design or optics determining relations between
the world, the things, and the humans. Its control is realized through a natu-
ralized objectifying principle of perception and interpretation of the world,
of other human and nonhuman beings, of manmade objects, and of knowl-
edge. The main tools of modernity/coloniality in both Western liberal and
Socialist versions are vectorial time and progressivist teleology; the absurdly
 Postcolonial, decolonial, and post-socialist 167
rationalized management of knowledge and subjectivity; the sanctification
of technological development; the cult of the future and the dismissal of the
negatively marked tradition, particularly if this is a spatially alien past, with
regular lapses into exoticism and antiquarianism.
The concept of coloniality allows drawing the Ottoman Sultanate and
the Russian Czarist and Soviet empires into the modern/colonial matrix,
while at the same time provincializing and humbling the Anglophone post-
colonial studies through downsizing them to their specific geopolitical and
corpopolitical experience. Significantly, the decolonial thought is not doing
this in order to occupy itself a central place as a champion of the new uni-
versalist Truth but only to draw the attention to the optional nature of any
theoretical discourse.

Revisiting the logic of coloniality and the limits

of postcoloniality
Ten years ago, together with Walter Mignolo we co-authored a book chap-
ter on the logic of coloniality and the limits of postcoloniality (Mignolo and
Tlostanova 2007), where we tried to explain that the postcolonial discon-
tent stems from its too close (and not seen as a problem) link with moder-
nity as a set of particular epistemic assumptions. In decolonial view, this
leads to the ultimate failure of postcolonial critique attempting to use the
methodological tools of the master in order to dismantle his house, to para-
phrase Audre Lorde (Lorde 1984, 112). Since it is indeed impossible, the
postcolonial theory stops at the level of changing the content but not the
terms of the discussion.
The delocalized universalism of postcolonial theory in launching terms
that stem from particular local histories but are then subsequently presented
as applicable to any context is discordant with decolonial pluriversality
(Mignolo 2013)—a coexistence and correlation of many interacting and
intersecting non-abstract universals grounded in the geopolitics and corpo-
politics of knowledge, being, gender, and perception, reinstating the expe-
riential nature of knowledge and the origin of any theory in the human
life-world. Pluriversal critique targets not the concrete constellations of
race, gender, and class but rather the aberration of the universal as such.
And this goal is usually beyond the interests of postcolonial scholars.
What is at stake here is the degree of postcolonial and decolonial
involvement in de-automatizing of and delinking from the Western epis-
temic premises, naturalized cognitive operations, methodological clichés
and disciplinary divisions, and consequently, attempts to build a differ-
ent conceptual apparatus to launch or set free an alternative world per-
ception. The postcolonial critique of the (neo)colonialist Western tactics
in the past and in the present is usually framed in the very terms of the
Western post-structuralist, neo-Marxist, post-Lacanian or affect theories,
or at least with some curtsey to the West as an uncontested producer of
168 Madina Tlostanova
disembodied universal knowledge. This leads to a reproduction of mono-
topical hermeneutics (Mignolo 1995, 13), with its privilege of control-
ling knowledge and meaning from the position of sameness and through
inventing its otherness. Hence the postcolonial discourse still interprets
the (post)colonial other for the same, in a language that the same is able
to understand and share.
In decolonial terms, this syndrome is called the “hubris of the zero point,”
which, according to S. Castro-Gómez, is a specific Eurocentric positional-
ity of the sensing and thinking subject, occupying a delocalized and disem-
bodied vantage point which eliminates any other possible ways to produce,
transmit, and represent knowledge, allowing for a world view to be built on
a rigid essentialist progressivist model:

The co-existence of diverse ways of producing and transmitting knowl-

edge is eliminated because now all forms of human knowledge are
ordered on an epistemological scale from the traditional to the ­modern,
from barbarism to civilization, from the community to the individual,
from the orient to occident. […] By way of this strategy, scientific
thought positions itself as the only valid form of producing knowledge,
and Europe acquires an epistemological hegemony over all other cul-
tures of the world.
(Castro-Gómez 2007, 433)

As a result, the Western monopoly on knowledge production and distribu-

tion and the disciplinary matrix of the modern/colonial knowledge remain
intact even if postcolonial theorists offer considerable reinterpretations
of the initial Western critical concepts and theories. An interesting exam-
ple is the postcolonial theory of affect as envisioned by Sara Ahmed, who
offers a radical and powerful critique of Eurocentrism, racism, heterosex-
ism, sexism, yet always formulates it within the accepted terms of the affect
theory with its essentially Western instruments and assumptions (Ahmed
2014). This postcolonial strategy facilitates a dialogue with the mainstream
Western theories by remaining within the same hermeneutical horizon and
hence brings an easier and more successful institutionalization, yet at times
may inadvertently reproduce coloniality of knowledge.
Decolonial option performs a different epistemic operation. It does not
start with Lacan or Butler, slightly modifying their theories to make them fit
the analysis of the post/neocolonial reality, but rather focuses from the start
on the genealogy of decolonial thinkers and their epistemic tools (Marcos
2006, Kusch 2010, Adorno 2000). Then, instead of postcolonial version
of affect emerges a decolonial geopolitics and corpopolitics of knowledge,
being, and perception (Tlostanova and Mignolo 2012) and a decolonial
aesthesis (Mignolo 2011, Tlostanova 2017) that focus on who produces
knowledge, from where, and why, and never starts with applying the estab-
lished theories to some new postcolonial material.
 Postcolonial, decolonial, and post-socialist 169
The postcolonial disciplinarity and the decolonial antidote
Even in their most critical versions, postcolonial studies remain within
the established disciplinary mode in which a study presupposes a firm
subject/object division. Their successful and quick institutionalization has
required a sacrifice of choosing the side of the studying subject, not the
studied object. The institutional disciplinary frame coded by the word
“studies” does not presuppose by definition, putting theory and life-world
on the same axis and practicing decolonization in our everyday writing,
thinking, and activism. This does not mean that postcolonial theorists
neglect the corpopolitics and the geopolitics of knowledge and percep-
tion, or that they do not take radically decolonizing positions as activists-
cum-theorists. It just means that their discipline does not require or pre-
suppose this kind of move on their part and it becomes a matter of a per-
sonal decolonial choice.
A successful institutionalization also means a necessity to defend one’s
disciplinary territory and compete with other disciplines, which can be a
stumbling point between the better and longer institutionalized postcolonial
studies, and the decolonial option, which makes a point out of its refusal
to institutionalize. Similarly to post-structuralism, postcolonial studies still
deconstruct modernity from within, whereas the decolonial option is from
the start speaking from Dusselian exteriority as an outside created from
the inside (Dussel 1993) and often from a position of an absolute other of
modernity, or the Fanonian “wretched of the earth” (Fanon 1963).
Decolonial option does not offer a self-sufficient single truth proclamation
(being an option among other options), and it does not describe phenomena
from a detached and objectified vantage point. By contrast, any “studies”
do not have a choice but to be defined by contrast with other disciplines and
promote their own universal truth. Institutionalization leads to disciplinary
decadence as a proliferation of disciplines and their losing links with reality
(deontologization), in Lewis Gordon’s formulation (Gordon 2006), and a
compliance with the coloniality of knowledge in trying to secure a more sta-
ble position for one’s scholarly group within the existing epistemic matrix
of modernity/coloniality.

The post-Soviet experience disrupting and complicating

the postcolonial theory
As a trained Americanist, back in the 1990s I worked on a book on the
US multiculturalism which introduced me to the postcolonial theory, non-
Western feminism, critical race theory, and other discourses that provided a
necessary language for the representation of my then indistinct anticolonial
sensibilities. My interest was both theoretical and personal, as I am a post-
colonial racialized other in the Russian/Soviet/post-Soviet empire. Reading
postcolonial books, I recognized many similar complexes and deadlocks but
170 Madina Tlostanova
also creative possibilities with which me and other ethnically non-Russian
post-colonial Russian citizens were struggling at the time.
However, our experience has always remained somewhat opaque and
untranslatable into the postcolonial language. For instance, the Soviet
empire represented itself as already a postcolonial and liberating federation
in relation to the non-Russians who were invariably pictured by the Soviet
historiography as previously suffering in the “prison for the peoples”—the
Czarist empire. One of the favorite rhetorical devices of the Soviet propa-
ganda was to contrast itself with Czarist Russia, carefully hiding the evi-
dence of their close connection and continuity (Sahni 1997). On the surface,
the USSR was promoting theatrical multiculturalism and other forms of
affirmative action and advocated creolization instead of the racial/ethnic
segregation (which was an important argument in its juxtaposition with the
demonized West). Needless to say that most of it was a cardboard mockup,
hiding racism, Orientalism, progressivism, structural inequality, and other
familiar modern/colonial vices, but also its own specific and often contra-
dictory features. Among them, the most prominent one is Russia’s drasti-
cally different attitude to different colonies in accordance with the degree of
their closeness to Europe, which is connected with the inferiority complex
of Russia itself as a second-rate, forever-catching-up empire of modernity.
The latter is important as it allows to formulate a crucial concept of
the imperial difference parallel to the colonial differences better investi-
gated in decolonial thought (Boatca 2010, Tlostanova 2014). Starting from
the emergence of the world system, a global imperial hierarchy came to
being. Within it, several imperial leagues were formed and transformed in
the course of time. In the post-Enlightenment modernity, several formerly
powerful empires were pushed to the position of the South of Europe and
hence to internal imperial difference. The Ottoman sultanate and Russia
became the external imperial difference, as they were rooted in different
(from the core European) religions, languages, economic models, and eth-
nic-racial classifications. Both internal and external imperial others were
never allowed to become equal to Great Britain, France, or the US today.
These markers continue to affect the global geopolitical relations, classi-
fying people very much according to the original modern/colonial human
taxonomy.
The second-rate empire of Russia is reduced in its rank from the semi-
periphery to an ultimately peripheral status today. It follows the rule of
regressive turning of imperial difference into colonial one. A second-rate
empire, in the imaginaries of the winning rivals, is regarded as a colony,
soon starts to realize this status, and react in aggressive and negativist ways
both in relation to its stronger imperial rivals and the weaker colonial oth-
ers. Imperial difference in itself is an evidence of the agonistic and rigidly
hierarchical nature of modernity/coloniality. At its core, there is an implied
and delocalized reference point which was originally in the heart of Europe
and today is shifted to the US. The rest of the people are taxonomized along
 Postcolonial, decolonial, and post-socialist 171
the human scale of modernity in accordance with their proximity to this
vantage point. Some are assigned a status of the forever-catching-up agents
or even voluntarily define it as their goal. Others are placed into the absolute
otherness and withdrawn from history and modernity.
The postcolonial theory does not offer any major category comparable to
imperial difference since it traditionally focused on the British and French
empires as the winners of the second modernity, but it is generally stronger
in nuances due to the fact that it grew out of literary criticism, historically
meticulous analysis of the concrete case studies, deconstructivism, and the
post-Lacanian psychoanalysis (Spivak 1999, Bhabha 2004). Therefore, it is
often advisable to work with decolonial concepts on a more general level
(including the categories of the internal and external imperial differences,
the geopolitics and corpopolitics of knowledge and of being, voluntary epis-
temic and affective self-colonization), and with postcolonial tools (canoni-
cal counter-discourse, mimicry)—on applied and descriptive levels. Both
can fill each other’s gaps and omissions.
Particularly complex, fruitful, and also falling out of the standard post-
colonial model is the intersection of the postcolonial and post-Soviet expe-
riences, as the Soviet modernity had its own coloniality as a darker space
for the non-Russian territories and people. Many of these groups are post-
socialist and postcolonial others at once who will always be excluded from
the European/Western/Northern sameness into exteriority, yet due to a
colonial-imperial configuration will never be able to belong to any locality
—native or acquired. Such groups are often products of a specific Soviet
creolization detached from any mono-ethnic cultural belongings, born and
brought up in the Russian (imperial) linguistic continuum and within the late
Soviet intelligentsia culture oriented towards the West. The imperial same-
ness inside the USSR and Russia has continued to exoticize and demonize
them as a colonial other on many levels. Yet the binary opposition of ethnic
culture fallen out of time and the modern and progressive dimension which
could be only Russian/Soviet or Western/global does not hold anymore.
The postcolonial, post-Soviet others may easily turn to be not only noto-
rious singers of their native land—according to the old Soviet Orientalist
model—but also decolonial critics, cunningly subverting both local anti-
quarian and global mainstream models, mocking the contemporary versions
of docile Ariels as opposed to rebellious Calibans. There are more and more
people who refuse to be assimilated Ariels or much less archaic singers of
their native land. Both of these extremes dangerously seal one into a narrow
ethnic identity, which many post-Soviet, postcolonial people reject due to
the multiplicity of their ethnic roots, the Soviet educational Russification,
and the impossibility to look for these roots in the family or social envi-
ronment. The postcolonial, post-Soviet other survives without the Russian/
Soviet mediation of modernity, reaches directly for the Western/global
sources, or turns to various de-Westernizing (Mignolo 2012) models and,
in some cases, to the Global South today—in quest of decolonial discourses
172 Madina Tlostanova
that are missing in the rhetoric of the catching-up ex-empire. Such a com-
plex positionality certainly falls out of the postcolonial dichotomous divi-
sion into the colonizers and the colonized.
The failed Soviet modernity/coloniality and its aftermath could not be
sufficiently interpreted through the traditional postcolonial lens, which is
too often marked by the typically modern/colonial delocalized universal-
ism. The complexity of the post-socialist-postcolonial intersection needs its
own discourse and its own critical optics overlapping but not coinciding
with either postcolonial high theory or more applied postcolonial studies.
Importantly, this discourse would have to take into account the wider than
colonialism dependence and postdependence relations in modernity, stem-
ming from the critical analysis of modernity as such not as an objective
reality but, first of all, as a set of epistemic conditions and patterns created
to justify and maintain its order.
Post-socialist feminist trajectories are particularly sensitive to the geopoli-
tics of knowledge in the core of neocolonization of the post-socialist reality
and subalternization and “housewifization” of its women, in Liliana Burcar’s
terms (Burcar 2012, 108), which is linked to the urge to make women once
again, or rather, back into a naturalized super-exploited class. This “back
into” is significant, as it allows a glimpse into a difference between postcoloni-
alism and post-socialism. It stems from the failure of the Soviet modernity—a
losing cousin of the Western capitalist liberal one. Consequently, the willing
and reluctant practitioners of this failed modernity were instructed on how to
become fully modern (in the only remaining neoliberal way), and therefore,
fully human. In a sense, it was a recolonization of a society that was previ-
ously colonized by a different modernity/coloniality yet made to believe that
it was a liberating and decolonizing power.
According to Boris Groys, “the post-Communist subject travels his route
not from the past to the future, but from the future to the past; from the end
of history […] back to historical time. Post-Communist life is life lived back-
ward, a movement against the flow of time” (Groys 2008, 154–155). When
the socialist modernity failed, we were told to go back to the usual established
course, speed, and most importantly, direction of history, and to the camou-
flaged but recognizable mild progressivism as opposed to a radical Soviet one.
Such nuances and paradoxes are unimaginable in postcolonial narratives. And
no matter how hard the academics have been trying to establish dialogues and
alliances between the postcolonial and the post-socialist discourses, so far our
success was modest. Reflecting on the reasons for this lacking dialogue may
help us better understand the evolution of the postcolonial discourse vis-à-vis
other important shifts in the global epistemic architecture.
The schematic juxtaposition of postcolonial and post-socialist trajectories
shows that there are many intersections between the two, but they take place
at different moments and are triggered by different reasons, leading never-
theless to similar results and even possible coalitions because ultimately,
they manifest different reactions to the same phenomenon of coloniality.
 Postcolonial, decolonial, and post-socialist 173
The development of postcolonial and post-socialist discourses reminds us of
a musical counterpoint; in many ways, the two discourses coincided, but it
happened at different historical moments and in different political contexts,
which prevented them from hearing each other. The early postcolonial dis-
courses were largely leftist, anti-capitalist, and still progressivist without
questioning the universalized Western norms of education, human rights,
democracy, and women’s emancipation. Post-socialist trajectory, on the
contrary, was marked by an almost emotional rejection of everything social-
ist and a fascination with Western knowledge, at a time when postcolonial
scholars still largely rehearsed the leftist anti-capitalist discourses and at
least indirectly opted for socialism. Later, a number of post-socialist activists
and scholars started reinterpreting the socialist legacy in a less negative way,
criticizing the Western infiltration of the post-socialist academia, NGOs,
and other bodies of knowledge production. It happened at the point when
postcolonial thinkers developed their anti-Western modernity discourses,
and objectively the two positions intersected, although the traditions they
had in mind were completely different and they did not hear each other then
just like they still do not hear each other today.
One more concept which can serve as a medium connecting various
un-freedom conditions and ways of their conceptualizing, going beyond
the postcolonialist agenda, is the concept of “post-dependence” (Nycz
2014) if we rethink its original Central European meaning formulated at
the intersection of the postcolonial, secondary Eurocentric, post-imperial,
post-socialist, and other complexes. “Post-dependence” can be also a
­
pluriversal term applicable to many situations such as the post-apartheid,
post-dictatorship, or post-Fordism, as it does not focus exclusively on ide-
ology and class (as in the case of post-socialism), or on race, colonialism,
and Eurocentrism (as in the case of postcolonial discourse). The common-
ality of the experience of traumatic dependence should not be formulated
exclusively from the Western/modern position anymore. Yet the imperial-
colonial complex cannot act as the universal common denominator either.
The ­post-dependence condition stems from the nature of modernity, yet it is
not always unproblematically connected with its darker colonial side. It can
be also a trauma of the imperial difference, as in the Russian case, or of a
secondary European positionality of Eastern Europeans who have been long
multiply dependent on various empires and today are slowly re-entering
Europe, struggling to accept the affinities of their experience with the Global
South. It is crucial not to withdraw into any local standpoint experience of
oppression but to create conditions for an alter-global vision and coalitions
against all modern/colonial forms of dependence instead.

Toward the deep coalitions?

In today’s situation of the global conservative and essentialist backlash and
the alarming revival of nationalist and neoimperial discourses, it is high time
174 Madina Tlostanova
we forgot about discrepancies between the postcolonial studies and decolo-
nial option and look at possible intersections and eventual coalitions which
could help us oppose something positive to the global defuturing tendencies.
Perhaps the division into the postcolonial and decolonial approaches would
be even eventually softened.
The opposition of colonialism versus coloniality can become a source of
future dialogues, as we are all now in the situation of the global coloniality,
which affects not only the colonized and the subaltern but also, increasingly,
the people in the Global North and in the semi-periphery, who used to think
that colonialism was not their problem and now discover that their lives
are becoming increasingly dispensable within the architecture of the global
coloniality. This is a unifying drive for postcolonial and decolonial theorists
and activists to build alter-global alliances and intersectional coalitions for
the future struggles for a different world marked by a genuine interest in a
far-away other and, eventually, a world where no one would be an other
anymore, where there will be other economic options than neoliberal global
capitalism, other ways of thinking than Western, and other ways of com-
municating with nature than exploitation.
Initial differences between the postcolonial and decolonial discourses
had to do with different types of colonialism in the Americas and in Asia
and Africa. These configurations led to accents on indigeneity in decolonial
case and on subalternity, migrations, and creolization in postcolonial case.
However, today the original links between the metropolis and its colonies
are no longer so obvious and visible in the directions of migration waves. So
it is wrong to claim that postcolonial studies focus on migrations whereas
decolonial thought deals with indigenous populations of the settler colo-
nies who do not migrate. Equally the markings of regional and historical
affiliations of the postcolonial and decolonial scholars are not relevant, and
researchers who are postcolonial in their origination and decolonial in their
views can be found in many different regions of the world—Southeast Asia,
the post-Soviet space, or Eastern Europe (Kalnačs 2016).
This is particularly true in the case of decolonial and postcolonial fem-
inists. We exist in a complex intersectionality not only with mainstream
Western feminism but also within our own respective postcolonial and deco-
lonial groups. Hence an important internal critique of the dogmatic hetero-
normative male version of decolonial option in María Lugones’s works
(Lugones 2008), hence the problematizing and nuancing of various post-
colonial assumptions in the works of women of color feminists (Minh-ha
1986, Barlas 2002, Oyěwùmí 1997). At the same time, both approaches
face the problem of choosing the tactical allies in our struggles, and often it
is a hard choice between feminist and postcolonial or decolonial agendas.
Generally, in both discourses, it is the feminist group which comes up with
the most promising, less dogmatic, and dialogically open ideas, allowing for
freer collaborations with other critical discourses of modernity and looking
for alliances instead of concentrating on differences and opacities.
 Postcolonial, decolonial, and post-socialist 175
Can there be a dialogue between the postcolonial studies and the deco-
lonial option as the two parallel versions of the imperial-colonial criti-
cal discourses? Such a dialogue could bring rethinking into the agenda of
human subjectivity and political agency, knowledge production, gender,
ethics, and perception. This dialogue is needed on many levels—from the
tactical importance of re-building coalitions along the South-South and
South-semi-periphery axes for a more successful struggle against neocolo-
nialism, racism, Eurocentrism, sexism, heterosexism, and other xenopho-
bic manifestations of modernity, to efforts to multi-spatially understand
the intersecting concepts in both discourses signifying similar things but
having different genealogies. Among them, the postcolonial concept of the
“subaltern,” whose origin can be traced from A. Gramsci to G. Spivak,
and partly synonymic decolonial concept of the “wretched of the Earth,”
which echoes the lyrics of The Internationale but is used in decolonial
option clearly in its Fanonian sense.
We all have to survive in the Western-oriented academy, in the increas-
ingly neoliberal university where institutionalization remains the only way
of legitimation. Yet such moves do not come without certain losses and
among them a political collaboration with the neoliberal Global North and
a necessity to speak its language in order to remain legitimate and be consid-
ered safe. A decolonial refusal to institutionalize then is crucial as a realiza-
tion of the principle of living and acting in accordance with the ideals we
defend. And if our aim is to decolonize knowledge and being, then it is not
recommendable to turn decolonial option into a “studies,” as it would only
add to ubiquitous disciplinary decadence.
Yet this radical refusal to institutionalize obviously forecloses a number
of administrative, financial, and other possibilities and may lead to isolation
and a lack of legitimation of decolonial scholars. As a minority trickster
who has spent many years inside a highly repressive academic system, I
claim that it is almost always possible to infiltrate, undermine, and destabi-
lize such systems from within. Having learned like a Caliban to speak the
colonizer’s language, the trickster uses this power not to curse but rather to
overcome the colonizer intellectually, existentially, and affectively, opening
new vistas for both the docile Ariels complying with theatrical multicultur-
alist rules and the indignant Calibans, striving to forcefully come back to the
reservation of irrecoverable past. In the present conditions, the best strategy
for critical imperial-colonial discourses is a negotiation, a cunning sneaking
of the radical emancipating ideas into the institutionalized structures. Such
a skillful balancing is possible only when we have access to more opportuni-
ties. In this respect, decolonial option has to learn from postcolonial studies.
We are at the stage when postcolonial and decolonial discourses are more in
need of a dialogue than further differentiation and mutual exclusion, of effec-
tive strategies for shaping the open and flexible “deep coalitions” (Lugones
2010) of resistance which are always in the making. One of the mechanisms
for the organization of this opposition is critical border thinking shared by
176 Madina Tlostanova
both postcolonial and decolonial discourses and first formulated in the works
of Chicana predecessors of decolonial feminism (Moraga and Anzaldúa 1983,
Anzaldúa 1999). Critical border thinking as a product of a complex and
dynamic interaction with modernity from the position of exteriority, of living
in hostile environments yet reinstating one’s epistemic rights, leads to an itin-
erant, forever open and multiple positionality, marked by transformationism,
shifting identifications, and a rejection of either/or binarity, turning instead
to a non-exclusive duality which is to be found in contemporary models of
conjunctive logic, in many indigenous epistemologies of the Global South, and
in diasporic trickster identifications overcoming the previous Ariel-Caliban
dichotomy in ironic forms of activism. It is necessary to advance an open criti-
cal basis, taking into account the existing parallels between various echoing
concepts and epistemic grounds of postcolonial and decolonial discourses, and
find a trans-disciplinary language for expressing oppositional being, thinking,
and agency across transcultural and trans-epistemic pluriversal spaces.

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