Authors

Discussion

The field of environmental humanities in our region(s) has been growing, and yet the visibility of environmental perspectives from our region(s) remains low within dominant environmental humanities circles and is often restricted to research in area studies, which in itself reflects the inequality and coloniality of dominant centers of knowledge-production. At the same time, in response to the Russian escalation of its war on Ukraine to a full-scale invasion, there has been an epistemic shift and growing exchange between places that have experienced Russian and Soviet violences, and a need to build more horizontal knowledge-exchange in our region(s). We see this roundtable as a contribution to the latter efforts, and as a self-reflexive space for building a cross/ and transregional epistemic community. 

In this roundtable we aim 1) to examine local and global challenges of engaging with environmental perspectives in our region(s) and 2) to question whether there are affinities between our diverse contexts (Baltic states, Caucasus region, Central Asia, Ukraine) that allow for a meaningful epistemic dialogue beyond the negative space of shared colonial violence. For this purpose, each of us (Epp Annus, Ketevan Gurchiani, Ilona Jurkonytė, Fabienne Rachmadiev, and Darya Tsymbalyuk) will make a brief initial intervention with the focus on water as a shared element to think with. We explore how our case studies and regions under investigation (riverscape in Tbilisi, the Baltic seashore, the Nida Lighthouse, lymans of the of Ukraine, and the Amu river) are embedded in the 19th century and/or Soviet-era modernization projects and how river systems and its infrastructure are caught up with era-specific ideas, beliefs and materialities.  We consider the ‘morality’ of materiality and the entanglement of different temporalities, histories and life-worlds. Discussion will touch on the intertwinings of ideological and affective-perceptual factors in the encounter with the flows of water, seas and rivers, and on interimperial exchanges and the role of affective-aesthetic interventions in decolonial engagements. The roundtable also reflects how artistic works can give space for simultaneous existence of multiple, sometimes conflicting, realms and effectively pose questions about customs, dreams, times and philosophies connected to water (installation Stains of Oxus by Saodat Ismailova, 2016). 

The rest of the roundtable will be structured around the following curated questions: What is the legacy of different colonial projects in our work and how can we engage in a cross- and trans-regional conversation without symbolically reconstructing imperial borders? What potential contributions to global environmental humanities field does the engagement with our region(s) present? What are the epistemic, institutional, conceptual, and infrastructural challenges we have encountered in our work in the region and globally?