Postcolonialism as a Tool of Cancel Culture: Transforming Political Discourse

The article analyzes postcolonial theory in terms of risk of its use as a tool of cancel culture in relation to Russia. The shortcomings of postcolonial optics of research related to the presumption of the moral superiority of colonies in relation to metropole, as well as the use of Western European discourse to build an alternative colonial identity, are justified. Methodologically, it is important to distinguish postcolonialism as an academic theory and decolonization as a form of social activism, but these shortcomings lead to the fact that the actual difference between theory and ideological construction can practically disappear.
The example of a number of Western European concepts reveals the mechanism for transferring the model of maritime colonial empires to Russian history, which opens up scope for ideological speculation. The maximum expression of post-colonial nationalism in the post-Soviet space is the building of an equivalence chain between the Russian Empire — the USSR — the Russian Federation, as a continuous “imperial oppression” of subject peoples. In this case, postcolonialism becomes a tool for forming the negative appearance of the present and past of Russia. For a productive study of the processes of colonization and decolonization, especially from the point of view of comparative political science, an analysis of the concept of “empire” is proposed to identify its essential characteristics and cultural characteristics of manifestation.

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