“How to Build Smart Society”: Dahlez and Decoloniality

About the Lecture
Within the context of contemporary view on the intellectual history of the world, Central Asia is able to offer a substantial, untapped material. The proposed topic for today’s talk will attempt to bring to light the unique connection of intellectual/political sensitivity in a very binary setting: dominance of coloniality (as Kuidjano) in Central Asia, and its connection with the process of saving/producing knowledge. Both sides are linked to deep-rooted divisions of the world: Orient-Occident. The division is interconnected with current national partitions in the region (5 –stans: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan), and with a preservation of the myth of Westphalia on the priority of national sovereignty. To initiate an understanding of Central Asian history/modernity, the author proposes to use - dahlez, philosophical concept of Al Ghazali, put forward with a view to the perception of many values of plural-cycle culture of the region, as well as the values of the outside.