I was honored to present my paper The Return of the Colonial: Understanding the Role of Eastern Europe in Global Colonization Debates and Decolonial Struggles at the opening event of the Decolonize Hellas project and research platform on 19 May, 2021. In my talk (starting at 1:04:20 in the video), I summarized our 2020 workshop event The Return of the Colonial, co-organized with Romina Istratii and Márton Demeter from Decolonial Subversions and supported by the Leibniz ScienceCampus “Eastern Europe – Global Area” (EEGA) program at the University of Leipzig. I also discussed at length our art and research exhibition co-curated with Eszter Szakács, Transperiphery Movement: Global Eastern Europe and Global South (2021).
In my paper, I introduced my world-systemic approach to conceptualizing semiperipheral Hungarian and Eastern European colonial histories and decolonialism from a global perspective. I talked about the capture of anti-colonial rhetoric and decolonialism by conservative and illiberal governments (in Hungary after 2012) as a result of the 2008 crisis by looking beyond the global histories of colonial discourse in Hungary, and I also showed how race and racialization could be historicized as “semiperipheral whiteness”. As an introduction to my concept of “transcoloniality”, I presented my research on how Hungary became an arena of various colonial projects that connected to Hungarian overseas settler colonialism in Latin America.
DECOLONIZE HELLAS/DECOLONIZE THE BALKANS AND EASTERN EUROPE: A FIRST CONTACT
Date: May 19th, 2021
Τime: 5-8pm
Organizers: dëcoloиıze hellάş with the Culture, Borders, Gender/LAB and the MA in History, Anthropology and Culture in Eastern and South Eastern Europe of the University of Macedonia and the CREABALK network/.
Convenors: Fotini Tsibiridou, Eleni Sideri, Ioannis Manos
This workshop brought together anthropologists, geographers and sociologists, field researcher scholars and artists from Southeastern Europe, who have long dealt with minorities, borders, immigrants, cultural difference, patriarchy, race and social inequality. We sought for ways that everyday stories of cohabitation and creative counter-publics could be inscribed in projects of historical and epistemological decolonization of our time.
This workshop raised issues related to the study of the enlarged Balkan space in the global discussion on decoloniality. In collaboration with the CREABALK network, the workshop highlighted the importance of alternative ways of understanding, teaching and fusing critical and creative knowledge with empathy, beyond academia and in communication with the general public/audience of Balkan cities.
The workshop was conducted in English.
Program:
1. «Decolonize Hellas/Decolonize the Balkans and Eastern Europe:
a first contact», Introductory remarks, by Fotini Tsibiridou
2. “Frameworks of race and decolonisation: bridging post-Yugoslav spaces and Hellas”?, podcast by Catherine Baker
3. “Decolonial theory and practices in Eastern and South Eastern Europe”, Special Issue presentation by Philipp Lottholz (on behalf of Katarina Kušić, Polina Manolova)
4. “The Return of the Colonial: Understanding the Role of Eastern Europe in Global Colonisation Debates and Decolonial Struggles”, Workshop presentation by Zoltán Ginelli (on behalf of Romina Istratii, Márton Demeter)
5. “Doing epistemic decolonization in Bosnia: peripheral selves”, reflections by Daniela Majstorovic
6. “Thessaloniki and Other Balkan Cities: Monuments, Memory, Representation, Affective Biographies, Cultural Geographies and Everyday Sensory Anthropology”, on the CREABALK network activities by Eleni Sideri (Pierre Sintès, Alessandro Galliccio, Olivier Givre, Fotini Tsibiridou)
Citation: Ginelli, Z. (2021): The Return of the Colonial: Understanding the Role of Eastern Europe in Global Colonization Debates and Decolonial Struggles. Paper presented at the conference Decolonize Hellas/Decolonize the Balkans and Eastern Europe: A First Contact, 19 May, 2021.
Zoltán Ginelli 