On Zionist colonialism and Israel/Palestine

Note from LeftEast editors: An earlier version of this essay originally appeared in Romanian in the Queers for Palestine. Statements, essays and poems[Queerș pentru Palestina. Luări de poziție, eseuri și poeme] collected by the Pink Bloc/Blocul Roz in Romania and published at the Free Pages/Pagini Libere collective in December 2023.^[i]

Nada Elia, a Palestinian writer, activist and academic in the diaspora in the United States, writes in her book Greater than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Intern/nationalism and Palestine^[ii] (2022), that much contemporary analysis of Palestine/Israel focuses on the apartheid state that Israel is.^[iii] Apartheid is considered a crime against humanity in international law. But the root of the problem and the existence of apartheid lies in settler colonialism, which international law does not consider a crime.^[iv]

Settler colonialism is at the root of the oppression of many indigenous peoples, in all the current countries that were born through this type of colonization, for example in the so-called United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc., or in territories that are still colonies of colonial powers, such as the islands of Kanaky/New Caledonia and West Papua.^[v] Elia mentions how South Africa succeeded in dismantling the apartheid system, but failed to form a fully liberated society.^[vi] This seems almost impossible in a capitalist globalized world organized by the coloniality of power, knowledge and gender.^[vii] Nada Elia’s book devotes the first chapter to the Zionist colonialist context – a 19th century Eurocentric form of colonialism from which the state of Israel was born – and settler colonial processes, before talking more about apartheid. Apartheid is the actual state structure, but it is built upon colonial relations between colonizers (Israelis) and colonized (Palestinians), occupier and occupied. Elia states that “there would be no apartheid in Palestine if it were not for settler colonialism”.^[viii]

Contrary to the image of Israel/Palestine in the mainstream media, where there is talk of “a conflict”, knowing the historical context and taking a radical decolonial and anarchist perspective regarding the recent events in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, there can be no talk of a “conflict” which presupposes more or less equal parties. There are occupiers (Israel) and occupied (Palestine) and we see an escalation of the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians by the state of Israel.

The founding of the British and later US-backed state of Israel in 1948 resulted in the violent events contained in the Nakba (‘catastrophe’ in Arabic): between 1947-49 some 700,000-800 000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced (some 80% of Arab population at that time) and at least 531 villages were destroyed by the Zionists^[ix], over the ruins of which Israeli Zionist settlements were built. The destruction of Palestinian settlements and the building of Israeli settlements on top is a process that has continued ever since. The Gaza Strip (the 41 km long and 6-12 km wide strip to the left of the last picture from 2008) is now home to around 2.3 million people, 70% of whom are refugees and their descendants from other parts of historic Palestine.^[x] A post on the Instagram page of the Institute for Palestine Studies explains that the existence of the Gaza Strip is an obstacle in Zionist colonialism’s plan to eliminate the indigenous population, as it is the only piece of territory not absorbed (at least administratively) by Israel or annexed by Jordan.^[xi] This explains the extreme brutality with which Israel attacks and has attacked Gaza in the past. There have already been 12 Israeli-led wars against Gaza, these being 1948, 1951, 1956, 1967, 1971, 1973, 1987, 2001, 2005, 2008, 2012 and 2014.^[xii]  

Israel’s specific ideology that has provided for the colonization of the territory of historic Palestine and present-day Palestine is Zionism. Zionism emerged in 19th century Central and Eastern Europe as a reaction to anti-Semitism and as a “national awakening” movement of the Romantic era, as well as a result of Jewish Enlightenment. Two of the most influential early thinkers of Zionism were Austro-Hungarian German-language Jewish Theodor Herzl and Russian Jewish Ze’ev Jabotinsky (born Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky). Zionism is based on the idea that Jewish people are not just a cultural and/or religious group but a nation^[xiii], and has as its vision the founding of a country of the Jews. Zionism asserts that the security of the Jewish people can only be achieved by the existence of a national country for the Jews alone.^[xiv] Zionism is born in accordance with the Eurocentric colonialist ideas of the time: it sees the founding of this country through colonization.^[xv] Colonization in the 19th century, in the thinking of the great imperialist powers, was something desired and valued. Empires and Eurocentric nationalist ideologies had a competition of who colonized more. Over the years the European project of Zionist colonization through the development of the state of Israel has become a more generically ‘Western’ imperial project supported largely by the USA.^[xvi] Fayez Sayegh, a Palestinian academic and one of the first theorists of Zionist settler colonialism, argues that unlike the nationalisms of other European countries that used colonization to build an empire, the Jewish nationalism of Zionism uses colonization for nation-building.^[xvii]

Ever since the first Zionist ideas were conceived, there have been also many anti-Zionist Jews^[xviii] who have resisted the Zionist idea that the only way to be Jewish is to be a Zionist. In the US, there is the Jewish Voice for Peace movement, whose direct actions and stances are strongly critical of Israel, Zionism, the complicity of the United States and the Western world in the colonization of Palestine, and claim an anti-Zionist Jewish identity. In Europe, recently a new cross-border network of anti-Zionist Jewish collectives has formed, the EJP – European Jews for Palestine, which will be launched on 3rd October in front of the European Parliament in Brussels. The network is comprised of different anti-Zionist groups from various European countries.^[xix] In Finland, where I am based academically, the Nahlieli – Jews for Justice in Palestine anti-Zionist group was formed in 2023.^[xx] In Romania I have no knowledge of such groups at the moment.

As the US-based Jewish Voice for Peace movement explains, the strategy of Zionist colonialism from the beginning until now has been one of “maximizing the land and minimizing the Palestinians”.^[xxi] This is typical to the practice of settler colonialism, which ‘destroys to replace’, in the words of the anthropologist and ethnographer from the territory of so-called Australia, Patrick Wolfe, who specializes in settler colonial studies and indigenous resistance movements.^[xxii]

In addition to settler colonialism, which is typical of the so-called United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, French Polynesia and Melanesia, etc., there is also economic colonialism or franchise colonialism, which is typical of the activities of Britain in India and of several imperialist countries in various African countries. In franchise colonialism the colonisers do not identify with the colonised territory but use the resources of the colony, whereas in settlement colonialism the colonisers identify with the colonised territory where they form a new state by destroying the societies already existing there, a process involving ethnic cleansing and genocide.^[xxiii]

Sayegh documents the historical development of Zionism and notes that in the first phase between 1882-1897 it was not very successful among Jews, who preferred to emigrate to places other than Palestine and did not identify with Zionism.^[xxiv] At the First Zionist Congress, led by Herzl in 1897, the Zionists developed a practical program to achieve their goal: the formation of a Jewish state through the colonization of Palestine.^[xxv] The three strategic points in the program were: 1. organization, 2. colonization and 3. negotiation. 1. Unlike other European countries where the colonizing center had a state administration, the Zionists lacked this basis. Thus, they needed a similar structure to ensure a centralized and well-coordinated organization. The newly founded World Zionist Organisation would fulfill this purpose. 2. To ensure the effective colonization of the territory of Palestine they set up several institutions such as the Jewish Colonial Trust (1898), the predecessor of the Bank of Leumi, the Colonisation Commission (1898), the Jewish National Fund (1901), and the Palestine Office (1908). These institutions, among others, would ensure the financing and planning of colonisation. 3. Through negotiation, alliances, and the creation of favorable political conditions, the Zionists wanted to secure support for large-scale colonization. Thus they negotiated with the Ottoman Empire, the German Empire and the government of the British Empire.^[xxvi]

Below I quote the two already mentioned Zionist thinkers who contributed significantly to the formation of Zionism from the beginning of the movement in the 19th century. I quote the English translations, but originally Herzl wrote in German and Jabotinsky in Russian.^[xxvii] I will put my own emphasis on certain phrases that exemplify well what I have described so far regarding settler colonialism and the fact that Zionism as well as the founding of the state of Israel was and still is a settler colonialist project that wants to eliminate the indigenous population:

If I wish to substitute a new building for an old one, I must demolish before I construct.

Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, 1896

Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home. The very name of Palestine would attract our people with a force of marvelous potency. If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake to regulate the whole finances of Turkey. We should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. We should as a neutral State remain in contact with all Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence. The sanctuaries of Christendom would be safeguarded by assigning to them an extra-territorial status such as is well-known to the law of nations. We should form a guard of honor about these sanctuaries, answering for the fulfillment of this duty with our existence. This guard of honor would be the great symbol of the solution of the Jewish question after eighteen centuries of Jewish suffering.

Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, 1896

My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.

The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage.

It does not matter at all which phraseology we employ in explaining our colonising aims, Herzl’s or Sir Herbert Samuel’s.

Colonisation carries its own explanation, the only possible explanation, unalterable and as clear as daylight to every ordinary Jew and every ordinary Arab.

Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim. It lies in the very nature of things, and in this particular regard nature cannot be changed.

Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population—behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.

Ze’ev Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, 1923

American historian Larry Wolff notes that the idea of civilisation emerged in the new sense only in the 18th century, first used by the French Enlightenment.^[xxviii] The new meaning of the word was derived either from the noun civility or from the verb to civilize as the antonym of barbarism, and in Europe it created the complementary binary opposition of Western and Eastern Europe, which stands between Western civilization and Eastern barbarism.^[xxix] Thus civilization began to mean the progress of a people and modernity operated through an ethos of progress and civilization. Modern humanism, which underpinned Eurocentric colonization, consists of the binary oppositional thinking of man-animal, man-woman, civilized-barbarian, West-East, etc. The above examples from early Zionism echo this modern-colonial humanist thinking: they see civilizing barbarism as one of the aims of Zionist colonization, as did the colonizers of America and other territories in turn.

Sayegh notes that the Zionist negotiations were not initially very successful, but the First World War and the break-up of the Ottoman Empire created favorable conditions for an alliance between the Zionist colonizers and the British Empire.^[xxx] In 1917 the Balfour Declaration, an official statement by the British Empire, was published, which views “with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.”^[xxxi] By 1917 the British were already anticipating the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, under whose sovereignty the territory of historic Palestine would lie until 1918. After 1918, between 1920 and 1948 the Palestinian territory was under British Mandate, and in 1948 the state of Israel was formed with US support. The Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate are two concrete instances that prove how Zionist colonialism relates to Eurocentric colonialism in general, as well as ideologically carrying forward the colonialist civilizing ethos of humanist modernity.

As Sayegh explains, during the British Mandate over Palestine, Britain elected a Zionist, Herbert Samuel, as the first High Commissioner of Palestine; transferred land for Zionist colonization, allowed the maintenance of a Zionist military organization (Haganah) and trained Zionist mobile forces (Palmach), while not allowing the same for the Arab population and repressing their political organization. Between 1936-1939 the Arab Revolts^[xxxii] against the British Mandate took place, while, as Sayegh notes, the Zionist organization was already functioning as “a state within a state” under the protection of British imperialism. British imperialism’s interest, however, was not the formation of a separate Israeli state which would have meant that Britain would lose control of the land, so after World War II, Zionist colonialism would find a stronger ally with interests in the Middle East and which to this day finances colonization, ethnic cleansing and genocide: the US.

Elia notes that after Zionism’s early assertion of colonization in the spirit of the 19th century, a major shift in Zionist thinking occurs around the 1960s.^[xxxiii] Between 1945 and 1960 many former colonies, more than 30 countries, became independent and the global sentiment shifted in favor of national sovereignty over imperialism. Some colonies had already gained independence from Empire before this period, independence meaning the independence of the colonizers from the center and not the independence of the indigenous populations, for example in the United States, Canada or Australia. The Zionists of the 19th and early 20th century claimed rather a spiritual connection of Jews to the historical territory of Palestine, whereas around the 1960s Israel began to use a discourse declaring Jewish indigeneity in that territory.^[xxxiv] Jabotinsky assumed that there was an indigenous population in Palestine that would resist Zionist colonization and the first World Zionist Congress put colonization on its agenda. But since the second half of the 20th century, colonization has been masked and the presence of Palestinians as an indigenous population has been denied. As Elia notes, at that time, the most popular description of Palestine, became the slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land.”^[xxxv] Israeli politicians arrive at denying the existence of Palestinians with similar arguments of the American colonizers, who denied the (political) existence of indigenous peoples who did not have social structures similar to the European model of nation states.^[xxxvi] An example of this cited by Elia is the 1969 statement of Golda Meir, former Israeli Prime Minister:

There were no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist.

Golda Meir, former Prime Minister of Israel, 1969^[xxxvii]

I won’t list contemporary examples uttered by Israeli politicians, because they are easily found on all social media channels and through Google searches. The statements in which the Israeli authorities associate Palestinians with barbarians and non-human animals are a classic example of both genocidal tactics, ethnic cleansing, and the manifestation of colonial power and Zionist settler colonialism aimed at eliminating the indigenous population and achieving so-called ethnic/racial purity.

Some additional thoughts

• In the history of Israel’s development from the Balfour Declaration to the present, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are linked on both an ideological and material level. The Zionists end up colonizing Palestine using the pogroms and persecution of Jews throughout history in Europe as a reason, and at the core of Zionist thinking is a similar fear of the “Other” that anti-Semitism has been instrumentalizing. Clare Lemlich explored this connection alongside Central Europe’s fascination with Israel in her article “Strange bedfellows: Islamophobia, antisemitism, and central Europe’s fascination with Israel” on LeftEast.^[xxxviii]
• Elia also refers to historian Sherene Seikaly who notes how Jews who have been persecuted for centuries by European societies, in the eyes of colonial and anti-Semitic Europe, become included in the European category by leaving the continent.^[xxxix] This is just one example of the links between Zionism and anti-Semitism. As Finnish  researcher Syksy Räsänen points out, Theodor Herzl himself wrote in his diaries that the anti-Semites will become the most reliable allies to the Zionist cause and Israel, because they want to get rid of Jewish people.^[xl] Räsänen also analyzes how Zionism actually inherited many ideas from anti-Seminitism, for example that Jewish and non-Jewish people are inherently different and thus cannot live in peace together, as well as the idea of Jewishness as a hereditary condition not a culture or religion.^[xli] To this day, many anti-Semitic voices throughout Europe and other parts of the world support Israel purely for anti-Semitic reasons, believing that this will keep as many Jews as possible away from their countries. Meanwhile, far-right groups sometimes superficially “support” the Palestinian cause, just so they can give voice to their own anti-Semitism. When it comes to refugees from the Middle East, these groups express Islamophobia and xenophobia while forgetting about their performative support. A case in point in Romania was when the state declared that it would give temporary financial aid to refugees from Gaza both for those with Romanian citizenship and those without^[xlii] which triggered a typical Islamophobic discourse at online far-right channels. At the same time, representatives of The New Right (Noua Dreaptă) were seen at pro-Palestine protests.
• From my personal perspective, as a decolonial anarchist and queer-feminist activist and writer, it would be particularly worth thinking about what it means for our present in Eastern European that Zionist thought developed from here. Similarly, our societies in the region still have much to do to give justice to all historically persecuted and, more specifically, exterminated groups during the Holocaust, such as Jews and Roma. Respectively, in addition to the movement in solidarity for Palestinian liberation, it is also our responsibility to fight Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, as well as to fight anti-Roma racism and local xenophobia. Furthermore, while campaigning for Palestinian liberation one should not forget other cases of contemporary settler colonialism, for example of Kanaky (New Caledonia) by the French or West Papua by Indonesia. Zionism is a specific form of settler colonialism, but it is not unique in its existence. Thus anti-colonial and anti-imperial feminist alliances should center not only Palestine as their field of struggle but a broader decolonization of all territories.
• I would also add that in connection with the development of Zionism it might also be worth looking at what an East European geopolitical positioning meant historically, bearing in mind the processes of imperial difference,^[xliii] inter-imperiality,^[xliv] Balkanism,^[xlv] and the invention of Eastern Europe in opposition to Western Europe in the Enlightenment.^[xlvi]

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^[i] Maria Martelli, Nóra Ugron, Raluca Panait, Gabriela Oprea and Daniela Melnic eds., Queerș pentru Palestina. Luări de poziție, eseuri și poeme, Pagini Libere, 2023: https://pagini-libere.ro/carti/queers-pentru-palestina-luari-de-pozitie-eseuri-si-poeme/.

^[ii] Nada Elia, Greater than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Intern/nationalism and Palestine, Pluto Press, 2022.

^[iii] For the Finnish speaking audience see a well resourced book about the Israeli apartheid: Syksy Räsänen, Israelin apartheid, Into, 2018.

^[iv] Elia, 18.

^[v] Just as this translation is being written anti-colonial pro-independence protests in Kanaky (New Caledonia) are being violently suppressed by the French military. See: AlJazeera, “Why are protests against France raging in New Caledonia?”, 16 May 2024: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/16/why-are-protests-against-france-raging-in-new-caledonia.

^[vi] Elia, 20.

^[vii] See: Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality And Modernity/Rationality.” Cultural Studies (London, England), 2017, 21(2-3), 168-178; Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation – An Argument.” The New Centennial Review, 2003, 3(3), 257-337; Maria Lugones, “Towards a decolonial feminism.” Hypatia, 2010, 25(4), Fall, 742-759; or for my own personal background coming from Eastern Europe see: Veda Popovici, “Becoming Western: The story legitimising neoliberalism, violence and dispossession in Central and Eastern European cities.” Lefteast (2022, June 14): https://lefteast.org/becoming-western-the-story-legitimising-neoliberalism-violence-and-dispossession-in-central-and-eastern-european-cities/.  

Coloniality does not equal colonialism. Coloniality continues even after colonialist administrations have ended in some parts of the globe and the term belongs to sociologist Aníbal Quijano from 1997. In Romanian we find a definition of the term by Veda Popovici in the essay For a decolonial (and) activism in the fourth issue of Cutra magazine, 2022: “Material oppressions, such as the extraction of local resources, the maintenance of certain countries in poverty, the exploitation of non-Western workers, are joined by immaterial ones related to how knowledge is produced and how collective identities are defined. The implementation and, to a certain extent, the acceptance of these oppressions are made possible by the discourse of civilisation: the discourse in which the well-being we desire is shaped in the image and likeness of the West, and it is the West that teaches us how to sow its seeds. This whole process is called coloniality.”

^[viii] Elia, 20.

^[ix] Räsänen, 55; Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017. Metropolitan Books, 2020, 60.

^[x] Elia, 21.

^[xi] Institute for Palestine Studies: https://www.instagram.com/p/C0kSwqkREJM/?img_index=3 (accessed 08 December 2023).

^[xii] For an article on the 12 wars see: Jean Pierre Filiu, “The Twelve Wars on Gaza”, Journal of Palestine Studies, 2014, 44:1, 52-60.

^[xiii] Räsänen, 29.

^[xiv] Jewish Voice for Peace, „Our Approach to Zionism”, (accessed 08 December 2023). https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/resource/zionism/; Fayez Sayegh, “Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (1965)”, Settler Colonial Studies, 2012, 2:1, 206-209.

^[xv]  Elia; Sayegh; Jewish Voice for Peace.

^[xvi] Elia, 33. Jewish Voice for Peace,  “We’re proud anti-Zionists at JVP. But what is Zionism and why are we opposed to it?”, Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/p/C0Mu5zugBAu/.

^[xvii] Sayegh, 207.

^[xviii] See, for example, Irish Jewish anti-Zionist academic Alana Lentin’s lecture on antisemitism, decolonisation and Islamophobia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73OkngGki8Q (accessed 9 December 2023) or Amanda Gelender’s speech, “Israel-Palestine war: Israel’s massacre of Palestine is an assault on the Jewish faith”, Middle East Eye, 7 December 2023, https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-war-us-congress-zionism-menacing-message-jewish-faith (accessed 9 December 2023).

^[xix] https://www.instagram.com/europeanjewsforpalestine/.

^[xx] https://www.instagram.com/nahlieli_fi/.

^[xxi] Jewish Voice for Peace.

^[xxii] Patrick Wolfe, “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native”, Journal of Genocide Research, 2006, 8:4, 387-409: 388. Elia, 21. 

^[xxiii] Cf. Wolfe, Elia, 21.

^[xxiv] Sayegh, 208; Räsänen, 39. According to Räsänen only 2% of the Jews refugiated from Russia after 1882 as a consequence of the anti-semitic pogroms, ended up in Palestine.

^[xxv] Sayegh, 208.

^[xxvi] Sayegh, 209-210.

^[xxvii] Both Wolfe and Elia quote Theodor Herzl, considered the founding father of Zionism, and the quote from Ze’ev Jabotinsky is used as an example in Nadia Elia’s analysis. The writings of Herzl and Jabotinsky can be found online in English at the Jewish Virtual Library. See: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-jewish-state-quot-theodor-herzl. Translated from the German by Sylvie D’Avigdor, and the edition was published in 1946 by the American Zionist Emergency Council, Essential Texts of Zionism. Also see: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot. (accessed 7 December 2023).

^[xxviii] Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994).

^[xxix] Wolff, 9-16.

^[xxx] Sayegh, 211-213.

^[xxxi] Wikipedia, “Balfour Declaration (1917)”, https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Balfour_Declaration (accessed 28 January 2024).

^[xxxii] According to Räsänen the Arab Revolts were the longest and biggest anti-colonial revolts in the history of Great Britain.

^[xxxiii] Elia, 38, 48.

^[xxxiv] Elia, 48-50.

^[xxxv] Elia, 46-48.

^[xxxvi] Elia, 49-52.

^[xxxvii] Quote from Elia, 49-50. Here Elia also reminds us that Meir was chosen in a poll the most admired woman in the US in 1974, a striking example of the hypocrisy of white imperialist feminism.

^[xxxviii] Clare Lemlich, “Strange bedfellows: Islamophobia, antisemitism, and central Europe’s fascination with Israel”, LeftEast, 31 March 2022: https://lefteast.org/strange-bedfellows-islamophobia-antisemitism-and-central-europes-fascination-with-israel/.

^[xxxix] Elia, 48.

^[xl] Räsänen, 31.

^[xli] Räsänen, 30.

^[xlii] Alexandru Costea, „Refugiații din Fâșia Gaza care au venit în România vor primi bani de la Guvern pentru cazare și mâncare”, Digi21, https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/actualitate/social/guvernul-va-oferi-ajutoare-financiare-refugiatilor-din-gaza-ajunsi-in-romania-2589755

^[xliii] Madina Tlostanova, “Can the post-Soviet think? On coloniality of knowledge, external imperial and double colonial difference”, Intersections: East European Journal of Society and Politics, 2015, 1(2); Madina Tlostanova, “Introduction: A Leap Into the Void?” In Madina Tlostanova, Postcolonialism and Postsocialism in Fiction and Art, (Springer International Publishing, 2017); Madina Tlostanova, “Discordant Trajectories of the (Post-)Soviet (Post)Colonial Aesthetics”, Interventions, 2022, 24(7), 995–1010.

^[xliv] Anca Parvulescu and Manuela Boatcă, Creolizing the Modern: Transylvania across Empires. (Cornell University Press, 2022).

^[xlv] Maria Todorova,”The Balkans: From Discovery to Invention”, Slavic Review, 1994, 53(2), 453–482.

Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, Oxford University Press, 1997.

^[xlvi] Wolff.