From Surplus to Excess: Postsocialist Emptiness in an Inter-Imperial Terrain
Dace Dzenovska (Oxford)
- Beginning:
- Thursday, 28 May 2026 14:15
On 28 May 2026 we will welcome Dace Dzenovska to our Regensburg Research Colloquium. She will give a lecture on "From Surplus to Excess: Postsocialist Emptiness in an Inter-Imperial Terrain". The lecture will be held in English.
Abstract:
In this talk, I will argue that postsocialist emptying places are related to postcolonial expulsions and postindustrial “left behind” places, but that they allow us to trace specific post-Cold War configurations of forces that may not be visible elsewhere. Collaborative ethnographic comparison of emptying places in postsocialist contexts shows that surplus—that is people and places not needed by capital and the state—is also excess, that is, practices and relations that, even if constituted through capitalist relations, are not defined by them. More than that, it shows that the distinction between surplus and excess is hard to make and that both exist side by side.
Dace Dzenovska:
She is Associate Professor in Anthropology of Migration at the University of Oxford. She researches the changing relations between people, place, state, and capital in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. She is the author School of Europeanness: Tolerance and Other Lessons in Political Liberalism in Latvia (Cornell, 2018), and the lead author of Living Emptiness: Place, Power, and Meaning-Making from the Baltic to the Russian Far East (forthcoming with Stanford University Press, 2026). She is completing a book entitled Empires We Choose: Migration and Sovereignty in a Double Periphery for Cornell University Press.
Cooperation:
Leibniz ScienceCampus Europe and America in the Modern World
Venue:
GS OSESUR, Landshuter Straße 4, 93047 Regensburg, Room 017 (ground floor)