Participants

Discussion

We have seen a profound turn globally towards decolonisation in the past decade. These discussions hadn’t escaped Central Asia. For this roundtable scholars and activists from Central Asia from various academic disciplines or non-disciplines, gather to discuss what imagining decolonial futures means for them. In the spirit of Aimé Césaire, the discussion is aimed to be future-oriented, ‘For us the problem is not to make a utopian and sterile attempt to repeat the past, but to go beyond. It is not a dead society that we want to revive…’ Decoloniality in this discussion is not seen as a call for return, but rather as imagining ourselves for ourselves. Each participant will outline what decolonisation means for them, taking their positionality, experiences, imagining, and expertise as a point of departure. It is an attempt to define ourselves for ourselves, collectively and individually. As argued by Audre Lorde, ‘If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies of me and eaten alive.’ The participants will reflect on their practices thinking along the lines of gender, creative writing, questions of existence and being, a pressing need to speak up, and writing and being in decoloniality, all under the umbrella of futurity.