1 East Central Europe Between the Colonial and the Postcolonial. A Critical Introduction(Dorota Kołodziejczyk, Siegfried Huigen) -- 2 East Central Europe as a Historical and Conceptual Space. On the Production of Knowledge from an (Historical) Area Studies Perspective(Claudia Kraft) -- 3 Polish Stereotypes of the East. Old and New Mechanisms of Orientalisation in the Regional and Transnational Dimensions(Tomasz Zarycki) -- 4 Colonial Ambivalence and its Aftermath: Colonialism and Anti-Colonialism in Independent Poland and Ireland(Róisín Healy) -- 5 The Unbearable Virtues of Backwardness: Mircea Eliade’s Conceptualization of Colonialism and His Attraction to Romania’s Interwar Fascist Movement(Raul Cârstocea) -- 6 Reportage from the (Post-)Contact Zone: Polish Travellers to Decolonised India (1950-1980)(Agnieszka Sadecka) -- 7 An East Central European “Sahib” in a Former Colony: Andrzej Bobkowski in Guatemala(Jagoda Wierzejska) -- 8 Regained Landscapes. The Transfer of Power and Tradition in Polish Discourse of the Regained Territories(Kinga Siewior) -- 9 Between Pedagogy and Self-Articulation: Roma Necessary Fictions in East Central Europe(Emilia Kledzik) -- 10 Soviet Colonialism Reloaded. Encounters Between Russians and Central Europeans in Contemporary Literature(Miriam Finkelstein).

Open Access

This open access book explores the ambiguity of East Central Europe during the twentieth century, examining local contexts through a comparative and transnational reworking of theoretical models in postcolonial studies. Since the early modern period, East Central Europe has arguably been an object of imperialism. However, at the same time East Central European states have been seen to be colonial actors, with individuals from the region often associating themselves with colonial discourses in extra-European contexts. Spanning a broad time period until after the Second World War and covering the governance of Communism and its legacies, the book examines how cultural and literary narratives from East Central Europe have created and revised historical knowledge, making use of collective memory to feed into identity models. Siegfried Huigen is Professor of Dutch and South African Literature at the University of Wrocław in Poland and Visiting Professor at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. He has written and co-edited a number of books and journal articles on colonialism in South Africa, Indonesia and East Central Europe. His most recent book, Shaping a Dutch East Indies (2023), explores the construction of an authoritative representation of the Dutch colonial empire at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Dorota Kołodziejczyk is Associate Professor at the Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław, Poland. She is Chair of Olga Tokarczuk Ex-Centre. Academic Research Centre, Director of the Postcolonial Studies Centre and board member of the Postdependence Studies Centre. Her publications include Postcolonial Perspectives on Postcommunism in Central and Eastern Europe (2016, 2018), co-edited with Cristina Sandru, three issues of the European Review co-edited with Siegfried Huigen, and studies in comparative literature. .