Introduction: conjunctural geographies of post-socialist and postcolonial conditions

This special issue is part of the ongoing efforts of scholars, artists and activists to challenge knowledge production hierarchies in and about the post-socialist East. It takes the latter as its point of departure _as a site of autonomous theoretical and political practice_. The articles in this special issue focus on a range of topics, including infrastructure and mobility, protest and social contention, feminist and queer activism, property rights and human-soil relationships. All papers reveal and contest the erasure, marginalization and reductionism at play in academic, media and public discourses when it comes to the sociopolitical realities and the histories of the post-socialist East, along with the lived and embodied violence that ensue from the domination of Eurocentric models in post-socialist societies. Each paper offers its own ways of moving beyond political and epistemological deadends, offering alternative interpretations, methods, ways of theorizing, and academic, activist and artistic practices, in an effort to contribute towards decolonizing knowledge production and political practice in the region. These contributions offer different strategies through which to navigate and push against our marginalization in knowledge production by engaging with post- and decolonial thinking, unearthing forgotten or marginalized histories, or creating new spaces for knowledge production for post-socialist lives beyond conventional Western paradigms