The Tensions of Positionality Reflection

This is a contribution to the discussion forum “Conceptualizing Society after the Modern Territorial State and Nation.” Marlene Laruelle agrees with the need for the decolonization of “Eurasia” as a political space and a research field, along with the deconstruction of Russia’s “imperialness.” By outlining the main tropes of the ongoing discussion, she points to the ambiguity of the key categories that frame it and hence to the tensions among the various meanings of those unclarified categories. She identifies the main tension between the proclaimed emancipatory goals, both political and epistemological, of the decolonization debate and the fundamental nation-centrism of the prevailing mode of social critique.