Event

Rossen Djagalov

The End of the Affair: Reflecting on the Ruins of Soviet-Third-World Networks

The end of the Soviet bloc has been typically figured as a moment of cultural opening for its citizens. However, such an account would only be true if we limit ourselves to the bloc's Western borders. From the point of view of "the East" or "the South"--the numerous African, Asian, and Latin American societies with which the Soviet bloc engaged--1989 or 1991 was a moment of the Second World's (self-)provincialization. In addition to offering an inventory of the Second-to-Third World cultural networks destroyed at this moment, this talk will also historicize one particular cultural and academic formation that emerged in their wake: postcolonial studies based at Anglo-American universities.

Rossen Djagalov is an Assistant Professor of Russian at New York University. He is a historian of leftist culture, interested in the linkages between cultural producers and audiences in the USSR and abroad. His book From Internationalism to Postcolonialism: Literature and Cinema between the Second and the Third World (2020) uncovers the Soviet trace in postcolonial literature, film, and ultimately, theory. His second book project, “The People’s Republic of Letters: Towards a Media History of Twentieth-Century Socialist Internationalism,” examines the relationship between the political left and the different media (proletarian novel, singer-songwriter performance, political documentary film) that at different times played a major role in connecting its publics globally.