[spectre] CFP: Eastern Spiritualities and Peripheral Modernisms under State Socialism

[Andreas Broeckmann LEU]

From: Justyna Balisz-Schmelz
Date: Nov 8, 2025
Subject: CFP: Eastern Spiritualities and Peripheral Modernisms under 
State Socialism

Deadline: Dec 20, 2025

We are delighted to invite submissions of abstracts and full chapters 
for the forthcoming edited volume titled "Imaginary Spiritual Homes: 
Eastern Spiritualities and Peripheral Modernisms under State Socialism". 
With this volume, we aim to explore how “Eastern 
spirituality”—encompassing diverse traditions originating in Asia, such 
as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism—shaped the artistic 
practices and visual expressions of artists working under post-1945 
socialist regimes.

In the context of state-enforced atheism, censorship, and the 
politicization of religion, spirituality often emerged as a complex 
field of negotiation—simultaneously personal and collective, private and 
political. While global interest in “Eastern spirituality” is often 
associated with the influence of New Age movements in the 1970s, the aim 
of this volume is to move beyond the diffusionist model and highlight 
that such fascinations often began much earlier. “Eastern spirituality” 
often reached the region in mediated forms, but it was not solely 
transmitted via Western intermediaries. While local and pre-war 
traditions, underground knowledge networks, circulating publications, 
and oral transmissions played a primary role, the writings of Carl Jung 
and various esoteric currents—including Theosophy, which incorporated 
elements of Eastern philosophy—also contributed to shaping how Eastern 
thought and visual and artistic vocabularies were imagined and adapted. 
As Timothy Rudbøg and Mikael Rothstein argue, Theosophy did not simply 
transmit Indian or Tibetan teachings, but rather produced a distinctly 
Western “imaginary Orient”—a symbolic geography of wisdom and authority 
blending projection, fantasy, and selective appropriation. Therefore, we 
want to ask whether a specifically Central and South Eastern European 
version of this “imaginary Orient” also emerged—one that found 
expression in distinctive visual practices and in theoretical 
reflections shaped by local philosophical / ideological debates, 
political realities, and artistic vocabularies formed under socialism.

Thus, the term "imaginary" in our title emphasizes both the creative and 
the constructed/projected dimensions of these spiritual “homes”—not as 
fixed realities, but as evolving symbolic geographies built at the 
intersection of desire, displacement, and imagination. Following 
Mandakini Dubey’s notion of “esoteric orientalism,” we also wish to 
stress that the orientalizing of spirituality in these contexts was not 
only a matter of exoticizing the East, but also of generating new 
spiritual identities through fantasy, longing, and symbolic re-mapping.

A central aim of this volume is to move beyond dominant center–periphery 
narratives in art history and instead focus on spiritual, aesthetic, and 
ideological exchanges between regions historically marginalized in 
global art discourse. Rather than tracing cultural flows from Western 
centers, we examine the entangled dialogues between different 
peripheries—particularly between Central and South Eastern Europe and 
parts of Asia—and how these exchanges, driven by engagements with 
Eastern spirituality, contributed not only to the emergence of 
distinctive “peripheral artistic modernisms” but also to innovative 
artistic practices across different media. In this context, spirituality 
functioned not merely as a subject of artistic interest, but as a 
driving force shaping new aesthetic, ideological, and symbolic 
vocabularies in the region.

We are further interested in artistic travels to Asia—especially to 
India and China—that took place within Cold War political frameworks or 
through cultural diplomacy, and how these ideologically driven movements 
contributed to long-lasting spiritual engagements. These encounters 
often created unexpected forms of identification and symbolic exchange, 
challenging colonial binaries and inviting new modes of seeing and 
being. They also raise questions about how imagination—as a mode of 
spiritual and political agency—shaped the ways artists constructed 
meaning under socialism.

We ask to what extent these appropriations were shaped by projection and 
fantasy, and to what extent they reflected genuine spiritual 
commitments. Likewise, we consider whether the 'East' in these artistic 
practices functioned as a literal source of knowledge, or rather as a 
symbolic homeland—an imaginary space of resistance, belonging, and 
spiritual transformation.

We especially welcome contributions that engage with new methodological 
perspectives—particularly those informed by postcolonial and decolonial 
thought—exploring how Eastern spiritual practices functioned not only as 
forms of inner emigration, but also as instruments of critique, healing, 
resistance, and transformation, as well as sites of cultural translation 
and appropriation, shaping artistic practices and visual experimentation.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- How did artists engage with Eastern spiritual imagery inside and 
outside official doctrine or institutional frameworks?
- In what ways did “Eastern spirituality” provide a symbolic visual 
language for dissent, introspection, or community-building?
- How were individual quests for meaning (or “spiritual homes”) shaped 
by the political, social, or aesthetic constraints of socialism?
- What iconographies, narratives, or rituals were reactivated, 
subverted, or reinterpreted in this process?
- How did pre-war and interwar traditions of esotericism and Eastern 
philosophy/spirituality influence socialist-era art?
- The role of artists from India and China in shaping local artistic 
environments.
- What role did Theosophy and other esoteric frameworks play in shaping 
visual imaginaries of “the East,” and how can these be interpreted 
through the lens of esoteric orientalism?
- Can “Eastern spirituality” in art be read as a form of “soft 
resistance,” inner exile, or cultural continuity?
- What role did artistic travels to India, China, or other non-Western 
contexts play in reshaping spiritual and visual vocabularies?
- How did Eastern spirituality shape understandings of the function of 
art and contribute to the co-creation of artistic theories and visual 
languages?
- How did transnational contacts between marginalized regions generate 
alternative models of cultural exchange?
- How did exchanges between peripheral regions (e.g., Central and South 
Eastern Europe and Asia), often driven by spiritual engagements, 
contribute to the emergence of peripheral modernisms?
- How did engagements with Eastern spirituality inform artistic 
processes, experimental approaches, and visual vocabularies across 
different media in Central and Eastern European art?
- To what extent was engagement with Eastern religions a superficial 
adaptation or stereotyping, and to what extent did it represent a 
profound, genuine commitment?
- How do postcolonial, feminist, eco-spiritual, or comparative religious 
approaches help us reread these artistic spiritual engagements today?
- In what ways did these practices anticipate or shape post-socialist 
reconfigurations of artistic spiritual life and the understanding of 
“spirituality” in post-socialist countries?

Submission Guidelines
Abstract: up to 400 words and a brief author bio (max. 250 words)
Abstract submission deadline: 20 December 2025
Notification of acceptance: 5 January 2026
Submission of full chapters in English (8,000 words, including notes and 
bibliography): 1 June 2026

Submission Emails
Please sent submission to both of the following addresses:
Maria Alina Asavei, Ph.D., Charles University, Prague, International 
Studies Institute, maria.asavei at fsv.cuni.cz Justyna Balisz-Schmelz, 
Ph.D., Warsaw University, Institute of Art History 
j.balisz-schmelz at uw.edu.pl

Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Eastern Spiritualities and Peripheral Modernisms under State 
Socialism. In: ArtHist.net, Nov 8, 2025. 
<https://arthist.net/archive/51094>.

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