“Post-Soviet Ecopoetics” and “Retroactive Anticolonialism”: Theorising Central Asia’s Decolonial Aesthetics

Abstract

This article introduces two interlinked theoretical concepts through which to analyse decolonial cultural movements in Central Asia (and potentially beyond), especially those concerned with ecocritical themes. It first proposes the conceptual framework of “retroactive anticolonialism” as a marker of the recent turn in Central Asian cultures towards postcolonial revisionism and activism. I argue that this process is distinguished by a peculiar temporality: anticolonial fervour in the cultural and intellectual sphere has paradoxically reached its peak more than thirty years after Central Asian states gained independence. Works in this category resuscitate the anticolonial cultural movement aborted during the Soviet period, expose the taboo legacies of the Soviet past - including environmental exploitation - and affirm previously repressed traditions and practices from local literature, music, orality, and belief systems. Yet, while attentive to ethnicity, such movements are far from nationalist, unlike notable anticolonial counterparts in comparative geographical contexts. Building on ecocriticism and ecomusicology, I further propose the concept of “post-Soviet ecopoetics” - the ecomusical language of environmental solidarity - as a particularly potent decolonial manifestation of Central Asia’s supraethnic retroactive anticolonialism. As a primary case study, I analyse the ecopoetics of Hamid Ismailov’s novel The Dead Lake (2015), showing how inextricably it intertwines identity, nature, and music. While uniquely shaped by Kazakh flora and fauna, as well as local traditions such as akyr zaman, zar zaman, and aitys, this ecomusical language transcends the boundaries of nationality and citizenship and evokes solidarity with the various human and non-human beings and landscapes of Central Asia. As such, the novella exemplifies how retroactive anticolonialism in Central Asian cultures moves beyond the binaries of colonising centre versus colonised periphery, dominant language versus local languages, and human versus non-human, and proposes a genuinely inclusive, locally developed decolonial vision in the post-Soviet space.