Post-Soviet subalternity and the dialectic of race: reflections on Tamar Koplatadze’s article

Abstract

ABSTRACT In her timely and important contribution (‘Theorising Russian Postcolonial Studies’, Postcolonial Studies 22(4), 2019), Tamar Koplatadze identifies a number of blind spots of postcolonial scholarship focused on the post-Soviet space. This comment explores some of the implications of Koplatadze’s critique of such concepts as subaltern empire and internal colonisation to highlight the importance of applying the master–slave opposition in a dialectical manner. Turning to Frantz Fanon’s interpretation of racial difference, I emphasise how in his thinking about anti-colonial struggle, a radical affirmation of blackness dialectically transforms into a universalist emancipatory platform. An engagement with Fanon suggests that the border between the subaltern and oppressors must always be situated in the local context as well as in the global hierarchical order, in which the low-level agents of empire are often also exploited and disenfranchised. It is wrong to link the subaltern position with any particular identity, since any particularity can be imposed on other particularities, thus becoming oppressive. Against this background, defining Russia as a subaltern empire is a way of grasping the dialectic of multi-layered global hegemony; it must be read as a call for solidarity among subaltern groups rather than as an attempt to exonerate the Russian state.