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This article is an exploration of the momentous debates around racism and eugenics, or “racial hygiene,” that took place in Bulgaria in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Implicating some of the most influential public intellectuals and drawing much attention, those debates constitute, to this day, the high point of both racial/racist thought and anti-racist critique in the country. The text begins by looking at the context of and major protagonists in the debates, notably socio-biologists Stefan Konsulov and Metodiy Popov, before turning to philosopher Dimitur Mikhalchev’s liberal critique of racism and to heterodox Marxist scholar Ivan Khadzhiiski’s less familiar yet crucial intervention in the debate. The text suggests that Mikhalchev’s strongest arguments emerge both from his proximity to historical materialism and from his anticipation of some of postcolonial theory’s major methodological insights. More importantly still, it is Khadzhiiski’s critical discussion of the origins of Western (racial) capitalism, the role of the middle-class intelligentsia in promoting racist thinking, and the importance of political mobilization and struggle that continue to be profoundly relevant for debates around racism in the contemporary moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction explains the scholarly interventions made by the five articles in this cluster: Nikolay Karkov, “Racism and Anti-Racist Thought in Interwar Bulgaria: Some Lessons for the Contemporary Moment”; Zhivka Valiavicharska, “Plovdiv’s Bratska Mogila as a Microcosm of the 1970s in Bulgaria and the Socialist World”; Christina Novakov-Ritchey, “Locating the Peasant in Decolonial Analysis”; Marina Antic, “Socialist Modernism: Miroslav Krleža and the Poetry of Capitalist Development”; and Bojana Videkanic, “Nonaligned Modernism and Continuities of Revolution, Partisan Struggle, and Anti-Imperialism in the Work of Yugoslav Visual Artists.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to a special issue on decoloniality and crisis is presented including articles on radical multiculturalism and decolonial feminism, the rendering of Latino/a immigrants, and the Christian logic of conversion.

This text offers a discussion of the concept and experience of alienation, as it has been theorized in two very different traditions. Accordingly, I juxtapose a recent discussion by Italian Autonomist Marxist Franko "Bifo" Berardi to that of Argentine philosopher and scholar of indigenous cosmologies Rodolfo Kusch. Unlike Berardi's anti-capitalist critique, Kusch identifies Western Modernity (and not just capitalism) as the source of alienation, and proposes a "de-linking" from its categories and epistemic practices. I caution that even a progressive meta-theory such as Marxism can engage in conceptual violence, when it claims universal validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]