Ksenia Robbe
Postcolonial/postsocialist memories as constellations. Reading ‘returning transitions’ in Anglophone and Russophone literatures
This talk will reflect on the study of intersections between memories of the Cold-War aftermaths in postcolonial and postsocialist contexts and will propose ‘constellational reading’ as an approach for discerning and initiating dialogues across such diverse locations. Drawing upon my research on contemporary literatures from South Africa and Russia and through several examples, I will outline how this reading can illuminate global connections between memory practices that centre on the ‘transitions’ from apartheid and state socialism. Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s ideas and applied to memory studies, this method, I will suggest, can yield interpretative tools for reading trans-regionally against geopolitical narratives.
Ksenia Robbe is a Senior Lecturer in European Culture and Literature at the University of Groningen and currently a Humboldt Fellow at Goethe-University Frankfurt. Her research sits at the intersection of postcolonial and postsocialist studies, with the focus on concepts and practices of memory, time, gender, and feminism in literature and film.