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Paper Short Abstract:

The project aims to unwrite narratives on modernity by proposing alternative frameworks of reference and identification. The decolonial methodology is a basis for the analysis of parallel social transformations in two distant cultural contexts—post-socialist Poland and post-colonial Vietnam.

Paper Abstract:

The research project “Towards Decolonial Modernity: A Comparative Study on the Transformation in 1990s Poland and the Đổi Mới Renovation period in Vietnam” applies postcolonial theory and decolonial methodologies to comparative analysis of processes of modernisation, which happened parallelly in distant semi-peripheral contexts with emphasis on their effects for cultural identity and artistic articulations. As such it aims to unwrite narratives on modernisation by multiplying objects of identification and constructing alternative frames of reference.

Modernity as an element constructing historical subjectivity is a factor conditioning the experience of the self. Today’s hegemonic concept of human (Sylvia Wynter, 2015) creates a heterogeneous space of unequal distribution of modernity in time and space. This inequality, rooted in the concept of world history (T. Tibebu, 2011), translates into the materiality of the global organization of bodies and legal effects (D. Ferreira da Silva, 2007).

From this perspective, modernity is gradable and refers to the scale of symbolic, ethical, and ontological judgments, which cause social, economic, legal, and cultural effects. The experience of sudden and accelerated modernization characterizes areas peripheral to modernity. The transformations in Poland and Vietnam in the 1990s are recent examples.

The novelty of the project lies in combining the experience of modernisation occurring parallelly in two culturally distant contexts (post-socialist European and post-colonial Asian) and focusing on their cultural effects.

The main hypothesis of the project is that decolonial methodology based on changing reference framework for the discussion of modernity can indicate paths for strengthening intercultural solidarity in contemporary culture.