Not by Leviathan alone

The book is an open-ended, meta-critical reflection on the discrepancy between the nation-state as an institution and contemporary and future (geo)political, social, enviro-climatic, technological and onto-epistemic challenges, written primarily from the position of the systematically excluded from the identification frameworks of the nation-state. Epistemically, the work stems from the decolonial and indigenous critique of coloniality of knowledge and from feminist skepticism towards objectivist, rationalist thinking modes. The author invites the readers to imagine other possible ways of political organization that would contribute to extending life on Earth, and the paths to their implementation. Without aiming at an exhaustive overview of the existing opinions on this vast topic or offering a single correct recipe for the emerging post-state political development, the book experiments instead with various tools, stimulating the readers to relearn how to imagine politically. The established methods, such as thinking together and arguing with authors from different areas and disciplines - from postcolonial studies, decolonial feminist positions to indigenous and libertarian anarchist stances, from critical environmental humanities to techno-fix pseudo-solutions and neo-imperial geopolitical accounts, are intertwined with engaging conversations with political/social/cultural activists, artists and thinkers and with experimental speculative fiction using creative writing as a mode of inquiry. Through its co-creative interactive style, this trans- and post-disciplinary work invites the audience to engage in praxis beyond the actual reading of the book. The book can be used in undergraduate and graduate elective courses in migration studies, critical security studies, human geography, decolonial and postcolonial studies, environmental humanities. It will be of interest to social, political and cultural activists, artists and writers and to broader audiences concerned with the question of whether and how it is possible to live politically beyond the nation-state, without sliding into (neo)imperial, totalitarian or corporate specters.

Table of figures
Guidelines for readers
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1 Where do you belong? Introductory notes
Chapter 2 Mapping out the critiques of the nation-state
Chapter 3 The bestiary of postcolonial and postimperial states
Chapter 4 Intermezzo 1. Conversation with anticolonial Buryat activist Seseg Jigjitova
Chapter 5 If and when the indigenous and the scientific overlap
Chapter 6 Intermezzo 2. The forty-fifth parallel
Chapter 7 The splendors and miseries of technocratic dreams
Chapter 8 Intermezzo 3. Boutique hotel Flask. A steampunk fantasy
Chapter 9 Anarchism and around
Chapter 10 Intermezzo 4. Conversation with anarchafeminist philosopher Maria Rakhmaninova
Chapter 11 The missing decolonial critique of the state: an invitation to imagine together
Chapter 12 Intermezzo 5. Two by two’s for sure five
Chapter 13 Coda: Offsprings of Leviathan
References
About the Author
Index

Madina Tlostanova is a decolonial thinker, fiction writer and professor of postcolonial feminisms at the Department of Thematic Studies/Gender Studies Division at Linköping University, Sweden. Her research interests include onto-epistemic and aesthetic aspects of decolonial thought; the intersection of the postsocialist and postcolonial human condition, fiction, and arts; critical future inquiries and critical interventions into complexity, crisis, and change. Among her many international scholarships Tlostanova was a visiting scholar at the Center for the global studies and the humanities at Duke University, USA in 2007-2008, DAAD Visiting Foreign Professor at the Institute for Trans-cultural and Postcolonial Studies at Bremen University, Germany in 2006 and 2011, GEXcel Visiting scholar at Linköping University, Sweden in 2013 and visiting international scholar at the Center for Baltic and East European Studies, Södertörn University, Sweden in 2014, guest researcher and lecturer at TATA institute of social sciences, India in 2018, international academic in residence and Horizon Editorial Board member at the Center for Contemporary Art “Tselinny”, Almaty, Kazakhstan in 2023, 2024 and 2025, and guest professor at the “Art History in a Global Context” MA program at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) in 2026. One of the top-cited scholars in her field, she has authored over 300 journal articles and book chapters, 13 scholarly monographs and 4 coedited volumes and special journal issues. Her articles have been published in ‘Cultural Studies,’ ‘South Atlantic Quarterly,’ ‘Feminist Theory,’ ‘Women’s Studies: International Forum,’ ‘Baltic Worlds,’ ‘The Thinker,’ and ‘International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.’ Her monographs and coedited collections were released at Duke University Press, Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, Indiana University Press and other top international publishers. Tlostanova’s works have been translated into many languages including Spanish, Italian, French, Croatian, German, Turkish, Kazakh, Chinese and Ukrainian. She has delivered keynotes at multiple international conferences in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Decoloniality, political imagination, speculative fiction, unsettlement, nation-state