Authors

Valeria Korablyova¹;  ¹ Charles University, Prague, Czechia

Discussion

The starting premise of the talk is the geopolitical positionality of Ukraine as a “double subaltern” between multiple centres of power (Korablyova 2022), having experienced epistemic injustice from both sides: an orientalising attitude and non-attention from the West against a mixed strategy of othering and “saming” from Russia, where the imposed inferiority complex (Ukrainian as peripheral, peasant, and underdeveloped) went hand-in- hand with aggressive assimilation (Ukrainian as Russian). Despite the incommensurability of symbolic and military violence, both stances converge in the denial of Ukraine’s agency. To challenge the imperial narcissisms and the great powers worldview, we invoke the positive rendering of “inter-imperiality” (Doyle 2020). Shifting the focus of attention from metropoles to peripheries, we zoom into practices of cultural survival and nation-building under adversarial circumstances, re-interpreting hybridity and geopolitical “smallness” in positive terms. From this vantage point, strategic inter-imperiality implies manifestations of agency within hegemonic frameworks, set by others, through invocations of subversive strategies of resistance and resilience and interdependent connections within networks of solidarity. This notion presents a conceptual alternative to both “strategic essentialism”

(Spivak 1987) and “strategic relativism” (Mogilner & Gerasimov 2024) and brings to light the viability of practices of hybrid heterogeneity with limited resources.