Of Love and Frustration as Post-Yugoslav Women Scholars: Learning and Unlearning the Coloniality of IR in the Context of Global North Academia

This collective discussion brings together six women scholars of and from the post-Yugoslav space, who, using personal experiences, analyze the dynamics of knowledge production in international relations (IR), especially regarding the post-Yugoslav space. Working in Global North academia but with lived experiences in the region we study, our research is often subjected to a particular gaze, seeped in assumptions about “ulterior” motives and expectations about writing and representation. Can those expected to be objects of knowledge ever become epistemic subjects? We argue that the rendering of the post-Yugoslav space as conflict-prone and as Europe's liminal semi-periphery in the discipline of IR cannot be decoupled from the rendering of the region and those seen as related to it as unable to produce knowledge that, in mainstream discussions, is seen as valuable and “objective.” The post-Yugoslav region and those seen as related to it being simultaneously postcolonial, postsocialist, and postwar, and characterized by marginalization, complicity, and privilege in global racialized hierarchies at the same time, can make visible specific forms of multiple colonialities, potentially creating space for anti- and/or decolonial alternatives. We further make the case for embracing a radical reflexivity that is active, collaborative, and rooted in feminist epistemologies and political commitments.