Mykola Riabchuk: Mapping a “Nation from Nowhere”: The Toxic Influence of “Imperial Knowledge” and the Challenges of Decolonization

Professor Riabchuk argues that the long-standing “invisibility” of Ukraine on the mental maps of the world—as well as the persistent factual misunderstandings—stems from the global community’s uncritical acceptance of the Russian perspective, both on Russia itself and on the peoples it has colonized. This perspective is articulated through a system of narratives developed by the empire to undermine the agency of subordinated nations, rendering them nearly invisible and voiceless to the outside world, and insignificant or inferior in their own eyes. Following Edward Said, Riabchuk identifies this discursive system as “imperial knowledge” and demonstrates how, over the past two centuries, the empire has successfully institutionalized and disseminated it globally as supposedly “scientific knowledge”—and therefore unquestionable, normalized, and elevated to the status of “common truths.” The deconstruction of this “knowledge” within the broader context of ongoing global decolonization processes must become a priority for both Ukrainian and international intellectuals.

Mykola Riabchuk is a leading research fellow at the Institute of Political and Ethno-National Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and a visiting professor at both the University of Warsaw and the Ukrainian Catholic University. He is the author of around twenty books, several of which have been translated into Polish, Serbian, Hungarian, German, and French. In recent years, driven by the need to communicate the truth about Ukraine to international audiences, he has written primarily in English. He is the author of three books in English, including Eastern Europe since 1989: Between the Loosened Authoritarianism and Unconsolidated Democracy (Warsaw, 2020), and At the Fence of Metternich’s Garden: Essays on Europe, Ukraine, and Europeanization (Stuttgart, 2021). Riabchuk is also a recipient of the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine for his 2022 collection of essays Leksykon natsionalista.

The lecture will be delivered In Ukrainian.

Discussion in Ukrainian and English.

Admission to this event is free. Registration is required.

Suggested donation is $20