ABSTRACT
Despite the explosion of both 'cosmopolitanism studies' and 'memory studies' as directions of interdisciplinary scholarly inquiry, the concept of 'cosmopolitan memory' itself has received surprisingly little attention. The cosmopolitan memories that are observable in Belarus engage with 'western' paradigms of memory whilst also following an autochthonous logic in which the Polish–Lithuanian and Soviet legacies retain their relevance as frames of reference. Writing a Belarusian memory is a creative and often insurrectionary act, one that employs the commemorative grammar of cosmopolitan patriotism to write back to colonial contructs of memory. The confluence of political and epistemological challenges faced by Belarusian memory throughout the two-century period under consideration makes Belarus a probing test case for theories of memory, nationalism and colonialism, not only in Eastern Europe and post-Soviet Belarus but also more generally. Belarusian nationhood developed in its early stages without a clearly defined 'national' memory, being co-opted by the competing cosmopolitanisms of Polish and Russian internalizing colonial discourse.
