«Переплетенная история» и/или «деколонизация» исторических исследований?

Государство, религия, церковь в России и за рубежом. 2023. Т. 41. № 3-4. С. 14–31.

Bessmertnaya O.

The article is an introduction to this issue’s section “ Entangled History:
Muslims and the Others in Russia and Abroad”. It articulates
the foundations of the historiographical approach named “Entangled
History”, as seen by the author (who is also the compiler of the section)
and the authors’ team, and examines the new meaning this approach
has acquired in the context of recent calls for the “decolonization”
of historical research, especially in the field of Russian, East
European and Eurasian Studies (REEES). “Entangled History” is seen

here as an extension of, but also as an alternative to, the straightforwardly
understood “decolonization”. It carries a decolonizing pathos
in the sense that it uncovers the functions and relativity of dominant
narratives and deconstructs them. At the same time, the agents
of domination are considered here not within dichotomous constructions,
as “ decolonization” is often seen, but in the space of the diversity
of cultural forms and practices, and such agents themselves
appear to be different in different situations. Intercultural entanglements,
which acquire a cross-cutting role in history, appear much
more complex than binary “interactions”, and the historical context
is constructed as flexible, fluid, and multilayered. Thus, the proposed
approach makes it possible to more vividly reveal the historical dynamics
of the communities under study, its multidimensionality and
multilinearity, and demonstrates the artificiality of the search for
“autochthonous”, “pure” historical conditions. Simultaneously, this
complex vision of history retains an ethical dimension.

Keywords: кросс-культурные исследования, decolonization, деколонизация, исторический контекст, cross-cultural studies, entangled history, historical context, «переплетенная история»

Publication based on the results of: Traditional Foundations of Modern Oriental Societies: Institutions, Narratives, Practices (2023)