Accepted Contribution:
Contribution short abstract:
"The Force Awakens", an episode of the Star Wars saga, was released in theaters in 2015, invading cinemas and therefore the imagination of millions of viewers. In the same years, the controversial process of de-communization was promulgated in the "distant galaxy" of Ukraine.
Contribution long abstract:
Among the various consequences of these laws, there was the destruction and / or removal of the innumerable statues of Lenin scattered throughout the Ukrainian territory.
It is no coincidence that the first monument on planet Earth dedicated to the Sith Lord, the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Army Darth Vader appeared in Odessa, in 2015. It is a statue of Lenin "retouched" by the Odessa sculptor Alexander Milov.
A few days ago in front of the public at the VivaTech fair in Paris, the Ukrainian president appeared as a jedi in hologram format, with a Star Wars T-shirt with the words «come to the dark side», (of the Force).
At the end of September 2022 Mark Hamill (or perhaps Luke Skywalker?) was appointed ambassador of the UNITED24 fundraising platform, which supports the Army of Drones project for the benefit of Ukraine, directly by President Zelenskyy, it is clear that the entourage of the President of Ukraine is reworking this type of symbolic representation, specially from military and political perspective.
Does Skywalker's agency coincide with Hamill's agency? Or with Zelenskyy's? Is science fiction really a plastic tool for the construction of probable imaginaries? And what kinds of imaginaries? Will the dark side prevail?
In Ukraine, in a peculiar way compared to the rest of the world, have the iconographic references conveyed by Star Wars become symbols around which the population has begun to build its own identity as a "resistant" population?
University of Sussex: Envisioning planetary futures through ethnography and multiple media
Session 1 Thursday 9 March, 2023, -