Epp Annus, Soviet Postcolonial Studies: A View from the Western Borderlands

Silviu Miloiu
The Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies & Valahia University of Târgoviște, E-mail: silviu.miloiu(at)valahia.ro

The core approach of the work deals with postcolonial studies and the geographical reference area of “Western Borderlands”, which largely consists of Eastern and East Central Europe. However, the Baltic states stand at the focus of the analysis and as such they are devoted the largest share of the eight chapters of the book. Colonialism, coloniality, and post-colonial are insightfully analyzed in the monograph and the author blends them to concepts such as colonial subject positions and colonial ideology. How to behave properly, what one could speak or do in public and what one instantly felt was forbidden, what could be published and what was rather to be shelved established certain boundaries between the conceivable and the inconceivable. Everything was driven by the colonial ideology which Annus defines as “a system of beliefs and corresponding statements that motivate and guide colonial discourse”. Spotlighting both colonial subject positions and colonial ideology and further encompassing the notion of colonization in the meaning of “territorial acquisition” and “system of domination”, the book is clearly operating in an innovative conceptual framework which turns it into a vital contribution in colonial/postcolonial studies.