Madina Tlostanova

Tlostanova’s research examines the enduring structures of modernity/coloniality and the ways in which Euromodernity has imposed its standards of humanity, gender relations, aesthetic value, and knowledge on the rest of the world. Rather than working within these inherited frameworks, Tlostanova seeks to delink from them through collaboration with intellectuals, activists, social movements, and art movements committed to resisting coloniality and imagining practices of re-existence. Her work begins from the recognition that neoliberal globalization, intensified after the end of the Cold War, has not produced universal freedom or happiness. Instead, it has deepened inequality, discrimination, heterosexism, xenophobia, and the disposability of many communities and forms of life. In this context, the postcolonial is understood not simply as a historical period after colonialism, but as a global human condition shaped by ongoing dehumanization, unsettlement, and defuturing. Tlostanova’s research asks how this condition can generate not only apathy and inertia, but also decolonial choices, forms of resistance, and practices of refuturing. A central strand of Tlostanova’s research focuses on decolonizing gender. She examines how feminism and gender studies continue to be shaped by the coloniality of knowledge and by the dominance of Global North models. Her work challenges the neglect and appropriation of voices, positions, and ideas from women of the Global South, arguing for forms of feminism grounded in equality, difference, dialogue, and resistance to intersectional forms of discrimination. Emancipating feminism from its Euromodern limitations is both a scholarly and activist commitment. Tlostanova’s research also addresses the decolonization of sensing. She explores how coloniality shapes perception, aesthetic judgment, and artistic value, often compelling artists either to follow Global North trends in order to become internationally legible or to conform to national identities favored by political and cultural elites. Through collaborations with artists, activist art groups, museums, and curators, she investigates politically engaged art, decolonial aesthesis, and the role of art as a space of public contestation, particularly in authoritarian contexts. A further area of Tlostanova’s work concerns decolonizing knowledge. She analyzes coloniality of knowledge as a central mechanism through which Euromodernity has been universalized as the only possible design of the world, with destructive consequences for humanity and other forms of life. Her research seeks ways to decenter Western epistemic canons and transform key modern/colonial institutions of knowledge production and distribution, especially universities and museums. This includes rethinking disciplinary frameworks, curricula, human resources, modes of perception and representation, and creating mixed learning spaces that reconnect academia and the art world with civil and political society.