International Gothic Series Russo Soviet Imperialist Hauntings

Russo-Soviet imperialist hauntings conceptualizes neo-Gothic texts from the former Eastern Bloc countries and Soviet republics in postcolonial terms. It maps virtually untouched aspects of cultural decolonization, focusing on the uncanny return of repressed and unsettling “hauntings” of unresolved memory traces of Russo-Soviet domination. Russo-Soviet imperialist hauntings examines the ghosts of the colonial and totalitarian past that have proliferated in international political and cultural landscapes since the collapse of the USSR. By combining postcolonial, post-totalitarian, postcommunist, and Gothic perspectives, this volume maps virtually untouched aspects of cultural decolonization and the politics of memory, focusing on the uncanny return of unsettling “hauntings” – unresolved memory traces of Russo-Soviet domination in the former Eastern Bloc states and Soviet republics. Operating within social, cultural, and ideological discourses, it facilitates a productive exchange across distinct (inter)disciplinary and (trans)national boundaries, unearthing and amplifying the voices of Albanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Latvian, Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian, and diasporic authors in settler-colonial societies in North America. While enriching critical discussions of the totalitarian, communist, and colonial past of the region through the Gothic lens, the book opens up space for a conversation about how conventional Gothic modalities have been questioned, appropriated, redeployed, and developed outside established practices and current paradigms of knowledge. Through their exploration of the transgressive energies of the Gothic, the contributors provide insights into a variety of transcultural forms and transmutations that have appeared in the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries, demonstrating the genre’s persistent engagement with history, ideology, and politics. Russo-Soviet Imperialist Hauntings explores the ghosts of colonial and totalitarian pasts that have resurfaced across international political and cultural landscapes since the collapse of the USSR. Merging postcolonial, post-totalitarian, postcommunist and Gothic frameworks, the volume examines largely overlooked dimensions of cultural decolonisation, focusing on the unsettling “hauntings” of unresolved memory traces of Russo-Soviet domination in former Eastern Bloc countries and Soviet republics. Working within a wide intertextual field of social, cultural and ideological discourses, it fosters productive exchange across disciplinary boundaries and brings together voices from Europe and North America. Contributors draw on transmedia approaches—literature, visual art, film—as well as transnational and translingual perspectives, illuminating the diverse forms the Gothic has taken in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries and its persistent engagement with history, ideology and politics.