boundary 2 41:1 (2014) DOI 10.1215/01903659-2409694 © 2014 by Duke University Press Postcolonial Media Studies in Postsocialist Europe Anikó Imre As we approach the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it no longer seems necessary to argue that the postsocialist region is postcolonial. A number of scholars have successfully proven the legiti- macy and timeliness of this claim. I start with an overview of the poten- tial benefits of and obstacles to the encounter between the postcolonial and the postsocialist. I underscore the fact that postcolonial studies needs the postsocialist infusion to reassert the relevance of a field in danger of exhaustion as a result of its academic institutionalization. In particular, the postcolonial history of (Eastern) Europe is a crucial component of the cur- rent crisis and the future viability of the European Union (EU), whose rheto- ric of unity and diversity has been increasingly disrupted by deepening divi- sions within Europe that are rooted in untold colonial histories. I show that postcolonial discourses are essential to unearthing and revising the compli- cated dynamic of codependence between Western and Eastern European nationalisms. This dynamic is haunted by internalized and rarely acknowl- edged traces of imperialism on both sides. The project of postcolonializing postsocialism can be effective only if