Introduction: Europeanisation as violence – Souths and Easts as method

Abstract

The introduction proposes Souths and Easts as method neither as a reductive exercise of simply comparing forms of violence across Easts and Souths, nor as aiming at flattening the differences within them. Rather than comparing or simply ‘bringing to dialogue’ historical formations of Souths and Easts, the chapter address both connections and dissonances in tracing Europeanisation as violence while striving to build theory from situated knowledges. It introduces the concept of ‘stratified subalternities’ and elaborates on Soths and eats as method as a relational lens that emerges from the fractured teleology of European progress. The chapter situates the volume in the multiple cracks of knowledge production aiming to sidestep the Western metropole as a concern and a point of reference. The aim is to not simply ‘evoke’ the violence, the ‘represent and destroy’ of Europeanisation but to remain close to the materiality of its production and contestation. To do that, the introduction builds on the epistemology of doubt that allows facing violence without embracing optimism, resilience, hybridity and cultural difference. The chapter stays with the epistemic and kinetic violence producing uneven terrains and positionalities in the processes of Europeanisation presented as the only viable alternative and the synonym of ‘development’.