ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book introduces a case study from the field of post-Soviet postcolonialism that highlights how “postcolonial theory” can serve the political objectives of “some contenders in the debates” and “their overt or hidden nationalist agendas.” It argues that the confinement to Western or European colonialism and imperialism is at the root of many of the problems of the postcolonial mainstream and describes the similarity of “Soviet colonial discourses” and that of Western colonizing powers. The book suggests that there seems to be “certain structural affinities between the multi-layered conditions of colonialism in East Africa resulting from its Indian Ocean connections and the super-imposed colonialisms of the Baltics, of regions of the former Habsburg Empire and the Ottoman Empire”. It considers “postcolonial theory itself, or rather certain modes of appropriation of it, as either programmatic promotion or subcutaneous practice of postcolonial nationalism”.
