ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the question of postcoloniality in the context of Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia (CEE&E) to critically reflect on the ongoing legacies of imperial and colonial formations. We identify multiple power centers exerting authority across the CEE&E region and highlight how gender and sexuality are tools of coloniality. A postcolonial perspective can expose how categories of social difference, like gender and sexuality, are imbricated in and tools of the ethnocentric and racialized operations of the nation. The chapter describes how colonial relations structure gender and sexuality in the following contexts: in Soviet/Russian relations to ethnicized and racialized women; in the apparent tensions between CEE&E and the West in contemporary campaigns for social justice; and in power relations within the CEE&E region. Questions about ongoing Eurocentrism in gender studies scholarship in the CEE&E region also are addressed. Finally, a decolonial framework also is considered as distinct from the postcolonial and that challenges feminist struggles to situate the CEE&E region in global coloniality.
