In this article, we explore two feminist films from a decolonial perspective: Forty Days of Silence (2014) directed by Uzbek visual artist/filmmaker Saodat Ismailova and Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (2023) made by Estonian filmmaker Anna Hints. We selected these films because we are affectively and corporeally linked to them through our roots in Central Asia and Estonia respectively and because these films connect the decolonial and the postsocialist in enriching ways for the current discussions on decolonial feminisms in the postcommunist world. Despite their very different historical imperial-colonial trajectories these regions share the Soviet and post-socialist experience and the specific strategies of coping with these dependencies.Through a close thematic and cinematic analysis, we suggest that while the two authors draw on different cultural practices and ideological and imperial/colonial intersections, they overlap in their interpretation of decolonial healing through focus on matristic rituals. We argue that rethinking of narrative/script conventions, improvisation and development of specific decolonial feminist cinematic gaze through alterations in ordinary camera work are crucial elements of feminist artmaking that contribute to decolonizing worldings.

A central concept of decolonial thought, “coloniality,” was coined by A. Quijano at an uneasy moment of the collapse of state socialism and discrediting of its utopia, and the arrival of neoliberal globalisation as the only legitimate narrative. Decoloniality is a reflection of disillusionment and a subsequent transference of decolonisation rhetoric from embodied anticolonial political struggles to the spheres of knowledge production and aesthesis. This meant at once a deeper critical delve into the modern/colonial mechanisms of the production of knowledge and subjectivities, but also a potential danger of depoliticisation. Whitewashed and sanitised “decolonial studies” or “decolonial theory” that fail to see the profound differences between postcolonial theory and decoloniality and often substitute decoloniality for deconstruction, yet keep the Euromodern epistemic framework intact, is what we find today in European and especially Nordic contexts. They are often marked by a blindness towards their own specific colonial trajectories and especially the imperial difference, and the struggles of indigenous peoples. A thorough decolonial revisiting of the Nordic colonial trajectories including the early suspended expansionist projects and specific forms of settler colonialism, could help enrich decolonial thought with additional critical optic and bring it more in tune with the current global challenges. These challenges go beyond the original decolonial focus on the intersection of race and capitalism incorporating the climate change, chronophobia, defuturing, and global unsettlement. They also urge decoloniality to move in the direction of relational agency unlimited to colonial difference alone and avoiding both the extreme of imagined indigeneity and a confinement to the ivory academic tower. Taking these nuances into account could help us come closer to an understanding of decolonial potentials in the future and its applicability in other places such as Nordic Europe.

The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has accentuated the parallel existence of discordant and impervious narratives – the global anticolonial and the more local anti-Soviet/Russian. Caught up in their victimhood rivalry, both narratives demonstrate their inability to engage in pluriversal thinking and be ready to sacrifice their privileges, real or symbolic. The invasion has also shown the poverty ofthe global theory that continues to flounder in the swamp of emasculated universalism or to grab on to the provincial and ignorant ”stand pointism” unable to practice solidarity with anyone and for anything. These are disturbing signs of a surrender to modern/colonial futureless agonistics that seeks to spite the enemy rather than to generate anything constructive. In its early years decolonial option stressed the importance of double critique. Today the double critique often shrinks to a one-sided rejection of the straw-manned collective west, while decolonial thinkers too easily pardon dictators and rogue states who manipulatively use their anti-Western rhetoric. Paradoxically, this bias reproduces the same modern/colonial paradigm which decoloniality claims to delink from while dismissing Ukrainians as mere victims or dispensable lives. The essay analyzes the reasons for this current dangerous binarization in decolonial thinking and reflects on possible ways for revamping the complexity of the double critique and hopefully, for reimagining decoloniality in the 21st century.

‘The Bedana and the wanderer’ is a poetic phantasy of metempsychosis and a healing transtemporal and transcultural fiction where acute mourning for the most loved person and the impossibility of continuing to live without this person turns the protagonist into a vagabond healer and fortune teller, and their departed mother – into a tame quail liberated from her cage. This unlikely trans-species and genderly non-binary duo then starts their wanderings replaying scenarios that were erroneously abandoned in their previous real life. The grief moment becomes a moment of epiphany rewinding existence back to the moment of the forking paths and allowing to edit the wrong choices in an other worldly parallel reality. The protagonist strives to cope with the enormity of death and to grasp its contradictory qualities, its entangled void and emptiness and freedom from any attachments, any sense of home or rootedness, which leads them to empowerment and fearlessness. The main character’s accidental death can be seen as a form of a weak suicide, transferring them to the next reincarnation and reunification with the loved one.

‘The Bedana and the wanderer’ is a poetic phantasy of metempsychosis and a healing transtemporal and transcultural fiction where acute mourning for the most loved person and the impossibility of continuing to live without this person turns the protagonist into a vagabond healer and fortune teller, and their departed mother – into a tame quail liberated from her cage. This unlikely trans-species and genderly non-binary duo then starts their wanderings replaying scenarios that were erroneously abandoned in their previous real life. The grief moment becomes a moment of epiphany rewinding existence back to the moment of the forking paths and allowing to edit the wrong choices in an other worldly parallel reality. The protagonist strives to cope with the enormity of death and to grasp its contradictory qualities, its entangled void and emptiness and freedom from any attachments, any sense of home or rootedness, which leads them to empowerment and fearlessness. The main character’s accidental death can be seen as a form of a weak suicide, transferring them to the next reincarnation and reunification with the loved one.

O design é considerado, no artigo, como um instrumento ontológicocapaz de transformar a realidade social e cultural e modelar aexperiência humana, a subjetividade e o ambiente. Concentro-me nasinterseções entre a compreensão de Tony Fry a respeito do designontológico e a interpretação decolonial da modernidade/colonialidadecomo um design global que determina a relação entre o mundo, as coisase os humanos. O artigo tenta traçar uma divisão entre os designsontológicos positivo (re-existentes) e negativo (desfuturizantes).Aborda a colonialidade do design que controla e disciplina nossapercepção e interpretação do mundo, de outros seres e das coisas, deacordo com certos princípios legitimados. A colonialidade do designtem acompanhado as utopias universalistas modernas predominantes, comoo marxismo ou o liberalismo e tem sofrido resistência, internamentee externamente, através de várias manifestações do pensamentoe da existência fronteiriços. Eu analiso o conceito de Fry dedesfuturização em relação ao conceito decolonial de pluriversalidade.Isso permite abordar mais detalhadamente o princípio correlacionaldinâmico como central para o design ontológico decolonial. Entre asferramentas especificamente decoloniais de design ontológico positivo,eu me concentro no Sumak Kawsay, na Democracia Terrestre e em maisalgumas iniciativas especificamente originadas nos movimentos sociaisde povos originários das regiões fronteiriças da Eurásia. O artigotambém aborda a descolonização de uma esfera afetiva como fundamentopara um design ontológico positivo. Por fim, defendo a necessidadede provincializar o design ocidental/do norte e permitir que odesign decolonial no Sul Global desenvolva sua fronteira “tantoquanto” posicionalidade positiva, uma postura transcultural negociala partir da geopolítica local e corpo-política colocar em diálogoe disputa com o moderno/colonial desarmamento design premissas.

Postkolonialność powinna być postrzegana jako ludzka kondycja, sytuacja egzystencjalna, podczas gdy dekolonialność jest opcją, świadomie wybraną jako pozycja polityczna, etyczna i epistemiczna. Takie niekonwencjonalne rozumienie terminów „postkolonialny” i „dekolonialny” pozwala przekroczyć długotrwałą rywalizację i geopolityczne podziały między studiami postkolonialnymi a opcją dekolonialną za pośrednictwem optyki i dyskursów postsocjalistycznych i postzależnościowych. Postsocjalistyczna interwencja wprowadza szereg pojęć niezbędnych do analizy relacji postsocjalistycznych i postkolonialnych. Wśród nich można wymienić imperialną różnicę, geopolitykę i korpopolitykę wiedzy, bycia, płci i odczuwania, dekolonialną estetykę oraz odwrócenie kierunków czasowych w kontekście postsowieckim. Dyskurs postkolonialny musi zostać skontekstualizowany i zradykalizowany. Oznacza to przejście od wyjaśniania „innego” w języku zrozumiałym dla niego samego do oderwania się od retoryki nowoczesności z jej ukrytą logiką kolonialną i prześledzenia innych genealogii wiedzy i aktywizmu oraz innych sposobów interpretowania nowoczesności / kolonialności.