For use by the Author only | © 2020 Koninklijke Brill NV © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004410350_013 chapter 11 Theorising Central European Postcoloniality: a Postcommunist Reading of 21st Century Literature from Slovakia Dobrota Pucherová Abstract This reading of three recent literary texts from Slovakia – the novel Határeset (2008) by Péter Hunčík, the play Holokaust (2012) by Viliam Klimáček, and the collective play Povstanie (2014) by eight authors – utilises postcolonial approaches to explore how the trope of colonialism might be used to analyse Central European identities. It suggests that postcolonialism contributes new methods and instruments to Comparative Liter- ature, not only expanding comparative opportunities but also reframing the questions around which literature is discussed. Postcolonialism is seen as the most important de- velopment in Comparative Literature over the last 25 years, bringing new ways for con- ceptualising literariness, interliterary relations, and literary history, as well as culture and identity. It is argued that contemporary literature from Slovakia self-consciously performs postcoloniality, claiming a place in the field of postcolonial literature and overcoming a national paradigm towards both local and European identifications. Keywords Central Europe – Slovak literature – postcommunist literature – postcoloniality – postnational literature 1 Introduction The development of postcolonialism in the 1980s has been central in transform- ing comparative literature studies from a Eurocentric to a more global discipline, as was made evident by several essays in the so-called Saussy Report (2004) on the status of the discipline by the American Comparative Literature Association.1 1 See Saussy, Damrosch, Apter, Lionnet, Greene and Culler in Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization, ed. by Haun Saussy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).