The South of the Poor North: Caucasus Subjectivity and the Complex of Secondary “Australism”

The erasing of the Second World has resulted in the increased binarity of the world order and changing of its axis to the North-South divide. Similarly to the West-East partition it tends to homogenize various local histories into imagined essentialized sets of characteristics. Drifting of bits and pieces of the Second World in the direction of either the North or the South has become unavoidable for all its former subjects, yet leaves them with an uncertain, almost negative subjectivity. The article problematizes the role and function of the ex-Socialist world and its colonial others within the global North-South divide and through the concepts of colonial and imperial differences. It considers Caucasus as the utmost case of the South of the poor North and analyses secondary “Australism” syndrome which is devastating for the subjectivity of its people. Finally, it dwells on the possible ways of decolonizing of being, sensing and thinking in the non-European Russian/Soviet ex-colonies.