International intervention—in the form of peacebuilding, statebuilding, and development— has been a key concept through which south east Europe has been known in academic knowledge production, and engaged with in international politics. In this talk, I identify international intervention as a ‘gatekeeping’ concept through which the (post-)Yugoslav Balkans are made known, and that severely limits which questions are asked and how answers are produced. I connect liberal interventionism with ‘transition’ thinking in South East Europe and the larger system of thought that Johannes Fabian (1983) termed ‘allochronism.’ This system of thought denies ‘coevalness’ and forms the basis of comparativist thinking by imagining different spaces on the road to the same liberal future. In the case of intervention thinking, it prevents both researchers and practitioners from engaging people living in areas of intervention as coeval political subjects.

For further reading:

Kušić, Katarina, Philipp Lottholz, and Polina Manolova, eds. 2019. Decolonial Theory and Practice in Southeast Europe. Sofia: dVERSIA. Link to open access full text. 

Kušić, Katarina. 2021. ‘Balkan Subjects in Intervention Literature: The Politics of Overrepresentation and Reconstruction’. Journal of International Relations and Development 24 (4): 910–31. Link to open access full text.  

Collaborative reading list on Race, Gender, Sexuality and Coloniality in the Balkans.