Epistemological, critical and reflexive gymnastics: constructing research in "former Yugoslavia" in the face of the coloniality of knowledge

This article is a story narrating the evolution of my own reflections during my Ph.D.: “Planning at the Borders of European Peripheries: The Serbia/Croatia Borderland and
the EU Cooperation and Reconciliation Injunctions” (Ph.D. thesis, Tours, Université François-Rabelais, 2016). Using auto-ethnographic methods, this article demonstrates
a conviction, the necessity to engage with a reflexive and critical approach, before, during, and after the production of research. I show first how I built the thesis’ epistemological approach, by progressively deconstructing classical theoretical frameworks (nationalist, postsocialist, post-Yugoslav). I expose and discuss then the outcomes of such a reflexivity, in particular how I gradually became conscious of the coloniality of (my) knowledge. These mental gymnastics allowed me to occasionally overcome – but regularly report on – the limits of my research, but also to recognize the unsurpassibility of certain aspects of my work connected to the situation in which I stated and conducted it. Reflecting on epistemological reflexivity contributes to clarifying scientific (in)validity of research, and better situates researcher’s arguments, their position and positionality.