SUMMARY:

The article revisits the challenge of decentering the Eurocentric epistemic map of cultural theory. It argues that merely adding neglected figures to the existing canon is insufficient; rather, the very spatial logic used to conceptualize theory, authority, and cultural knowledge must be revised. This thesis is illustrated by the case of Nikolai Marr, whose work reflected a double positionality: rooted both in the Caucasus as an imperial periphery and the Russian imperial and Soviet institutions of scholarly authority. His Japhetic hypothesis began by challenging the Indo-European framework’s marginalization of Caucasian materials, eventually evolving into the totalizing New Theory of Language. Rather than reducing this trajectory to biographical, nationalist, or ideological motives, the article situates Marr within the broader field of early twentieth-century epistemic reconfiguration. This shift was shaped by work at the boundaries of disciplines, cultures, and scholarly traditions, in both Western Europe and Europe’s East. Marr’s case reveals both the productive potential and the risks of such epistemic remapping: inclusion without transformation, compensatory counter-totalization, and withdrawal into particularism. The article concludes that to decenter theory, one must allow peripheral or hitherto excluded sites to do more than merely join the field; they must completely transform how the field itself is understood.