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- Convenors:
-
Thomas McKean
(University of Aberdeen)
Nataliya Bezborodova (University of Alberta)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Oksana Dovgopolova
(Odessa I.I. Mechnikov National University)
- Format:
- Panel+Workshop
- Stream:
- Heritage
- Location:
- B2.52
- Sessions:
- Thursday 8 June, -, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Prague
Short Abstract:
This panel looks at Ukrainian cultural responses to Russia's war, from explicit resistance to humour, from verbal defences to re-assertions of identity through traditional practices, in order to look forward to practical projects that can help rebuild shattered lives and stressed communities.
Long Abstract:
This panel looks at Ukrainian cultural responses to Russia's war, from explicit resistance to humour, from verbal defences to re-assertions of identity through traditional practices. In dark times, we need optimism and hope; we try to reassert a sense of control.
Much of culture is an attempt to assert control over the world around us, controlling the uncontrollable through searching for patterns and predictability. But when the world as you know it is turned upside down, questions of identity are brought to the fore - Who am I? Who are we? Who are my people? - and there is an urgent need to reconstruct it through enacting and reinventing traditions, humour, and stories.
In this environment, our family traditions, markers of identity, and symbols of cultural heritage and allegiance can take on a range of functions, from redemptive and inspiring to elegiac and memorial. Collectively, they can help us, by reaching into the past, to rehearse the future, as W. F. H. Nicolaisen puts it, a future that will be, that might be, that we wish to be.
We invite contributions that examine, or employ, the present-day function(s) and meaning(s) of cultural inheritance, tangible or intangible, in the face of strife, conflict, and uncertainty - the unknown that looms large in all our lives.
At the workshop, contributors will reflect on papers and how we might move forward to practical projects aimed at facilitating community and cultural recovery.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 8 June, 2023, -Martina Wilsch (Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology Slovak Academy of Sciences) Lubica Volanska (Slovak Academy of Sciences)
Paper short abstract:
The presentation, based on UNESCO (Living Heritage Entity)-initiated empirical research in five countries neighbouring Ukraine, discusses the need for living heritage safeguarding among displaced Ukrainians and the role that the living heritage plays in supportive actions since spring 2022.
Paper long abstract:
In the spring of 2022, the war in Ukraine led to an unprecedented influx of people fleeing the Russian aggression, who have become (temporarily) hosted by neighbouring countries. The UNESCO Living Heritage Entity initiated an assessment of their needs related to the living heritage to, but not exclusively, enhance their early incorporation into society. In Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Moldova and Romania. Empirically grounded in combination of qualitative and quantitative methods in the first four months after the outbreak of the conflict, the presentation focuses on the need for living heritage safeguarding. Further, it discusses the role the living heritage played in their early incorporation and identifies the diversity of processes related to living heritage among displaced Ukrainian communities and institutions involved in their support.
The presentation will demonstrate that the displaced communities live with intangible cultural heritage and its transmission on an everyday basis and consider it to be an inseparable component of their lives and the lives of their children and ancestors. Moreover, the displaced communities reflect the importance of living heritage as a part of the resistance to aggression against their country. Thus, the presence of Ukrainian refugees has fostered grass-root actions, as well as the increasing number of activities carried out by diverse organizations and civil society to help Ukrainian refugees and bring Ukrainian culture closer to the receiving society. Numerous responses in all participating countries have pointed out that cultural patterns are activated in times of crisis and become a reservoir of resilience strategies.
Oksana Kuzmenko (Institute of Ethnology National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)
Paper short abstract:
The paper is focused on communicative practices and folk narratives that describe the Russian war against Ukraine. The analysis is based on oneiric narratives with the motifs of prophetic dreams about the unfolding war that express local and national identity and are efforts to structure the future.
Paper long abstract:
The paper will explore the question: how does the unfinished war history enter lives of Ukrainians and what traces does it leave in personal histories? The author will dwell on the peculiarities of the vernacular in expressing human existentialism during the war.
The main focus is on folklore samples that allow us to describe the uncertainty of the existence of a hero/storyteller who find themself in a crisis. We will explore the influence of WWI & WWII stories on collective history that becomes the basis for today Ukrainians to model their present and their future. The author will analyze modern oneiric narratives, images and symbols that form folk concepts of death and life and formulate the narrative of "destruction".
More questions to explore are: how a "prophetic" dream about the war was transformed into a personal narrative? What is the connection of the dream symbolic codes to the narrator/listener's interpretation of their later life? Based on discourse analysis, the meaning of cultural heritage and "background" mythological and folklore knowledge will be traced through verbalized personal narratives.
The author believes that oneiric and personal narratives in the war everyday routine perform not only informational, communicative, and identification functions, but also an important compensatory function necessary to overcome trauma at an uncertain time.
Daria Antsybor (State Scientific Center for Cultural Heritage Protection from Man-made Disasters)
Paper short abstract:
The presentation is going to analize the role of food in memes about the war and how the jokes help rally people, provide support and protection, demarcate borders, as well as how they articulate ideas which go beyond words, e.g., love, gratitude, fear, shame, disgust or disgrace.
Paper long abstract:
The paper deals with the representation of food in Ukrainian memeic culture of the war. In the times of crisis humour help survive a difficult situation and relieve the stress. This type of humour helps to adapt to the new circumstances, to reflect the consensus on the issue and the attitudes towards it.
The presentation is going to analize the role of food in memes about the war and how the jokes help rally people, provide support and protection, demarcate borders, as well as how they articulate ideas which go beyond words, e.g., love, gratitude, fear, shame, disgust or disgrace.
We will examine how food becomes a means of resistance, a weapon that is used to neutralise the enemy, how it demarcates territories and gives hope. Demarcating has become one of the most important phenomena in contemporary Ukrainian culture. It works by association when place names are linked to the types of food (the city of Lyman sounds like lemon, Izium - raisins); or to a local signature product (the city of Melitopol is associated with cherries, the Kherson province with tomatoes and watermelons, the city of Bakhmut with salt and sparkling wine). These examples are widely used in popular memes, too.
The paper aims to show how gastronomic humour is shaping the new reality and creating the new context in respect to defining who the Ukrainians are and how they mark and express a sense of personal identity at all levels.
Iryna Voloshyna (Indiana University Bloomington)
Paper short abstract:
Using an example of Petrykivka painting as a case study, this paper illustrates the current tendencies and problems of protecting and practicing intangible cultural heritage during the war in Ukraine.
Paper long abstract:
Discussions about the issues of heritage protection and ownership of culture have become especially heated with the russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In the process of re-writing imperial Soviet historical narrative and re-claiming their national and cultural identity, it is very important for Ukrainians to mark and defend their geographical and cultural borders. Heritagization plays an extremely important role in this process. In this paper, I am going deploy the tools of critical heritage studies and use an example of Petrykivka painting as a case study to illustrate the current tendencies and problems of protecting - and practicing - intangible cultural heritage during the times of war: first, russian invasion to the Donbas region, close to the village of Petrykivka, and currently – during the full-scale russian war on Ukraine.
Orest Semotiuk (Interregional Academy of Personnel Management)
Paper short abstract:
The paper integrates national and international levels of political humorous discourse. The discoursive dimension of the Russian-Ukrainian war is analyzed with multimodal discourse analysis focusing on the supportive/subversive humor in political cartoons targeting Zelensky and Putin.
Paper long abstract:
The paper integrates national and international levels of political humorous discourse and proposes a multimodal analysis of the discursive dimension of the Russian-Ukrainian war and its implementation in political humor. The paper aims to analyze the distribution of the supportive/subversive humor in World, Ukrainian and Russian political cartoons targeting Ukrainian president Zelensky and Russian president Putin representing the conflict parties with special attention to the presentation/setting. The distribution of supportive vs. subversive poltical humor is based on the analysis of target, focus and setting of political cartoons depicting Putin and Zelensky and on the interaction of verbal and nonverbal elements in the cartoons. Political cartoons can be defined by its goals, frame of reference and means. These corresponding parameters (goal-target, frame of reference-focus, means-setting) as well as the correlation between self-image/external image and supportive/subversive political humor are analytical framework for the paper.
Elise Westin
Paper short abstract:
This paper draws on narrative traditions of animality and humanity in genocide survivor writing to interpret Ukrainian discursive responses to the Russian-Ukrainian war. The research demonstrates possibilities for target groups to assert some control over otherwise dehumanising genocidal discourse.
Paper long abstract:
In response to life-shattering events, processes of identity (re)construction take place among survivors. Where such life-shattering events involve the dehumanisation of a target group, as occurs in the case of genocide and similar atrocities, these processes can represent an attempt by the survivor community to reclaim their humanity through exploring the limits of what it means to be human, what it means to become animal-like, and how one can come back from the brink. In the aftermath of the Ukrainian genocide, known as the Holodomor, Miron Dolot (1986) described those who were starved to the point of resorting to cannibalism as “animal-like” and contemplated how one can become so “bereft of his or her senses” (p. 198). This paper draws on narrative traditions of animality and humanity in genocide survivor writing to interpret Ukrainian discursive responses to the Russian-Ukrainian war. While becoming animal-like is viewed as a result of perpetrators’ dehumanisation tactics, Ukrainians are often situated positively alongside animals, as allies against an inhumane Russian other. Maintaining one’s humanity is seen as accomplishable by behaving in a humane manner towards these animals and one another, while inhumane actions are seen to make humans into monsters, or in the case of the contemporary Russian other, orcs. The research demonstrates possibilities for target groups to assert some control over otherwise dehumanising genocidal discourse, in order to diminish its psychological effects. However, it also warns about the potential of such othering for the development of a cycle of violence.
Anastasiia Bozhenko (V.N.Karazin Kharkiv National University)
Paper short abstract:
In contemporary Ukraine it is a big question how to deal with the Soviet industrial heritage, which is way too uncomfortable not only due to its functioning, but also because of its’ connotation of the totalitarian past. We will look at how the heavy industrial heritage in Ukraine is perceived now in public history, contemporary art and activists projects.
Paper long abstract:
The East of Ukraine was the heart of the heavy industry in Russian Empire and Soviet Union. In the interwar period, during the Stalins’ modernization, a lot of the giant plants were built. The industrial way of life was also a key point in the Soviet propaganda. In contemporary Ukraine it is a big question how to deal with the Soviet industrial heritage, which is way too uncomfortable not only due to its functioning as far as a lot of plants were shut down, and now they are derelict, but also because of its’ connotation of the totalitarian past. The issue of Donbass became even more painful with the beginning of the war in 2014. We will look at how the heavy industrial heritage in Ukraine is perceived now in public history, contemporary art and activists projects.
In the first part of our reports we will talk about the Soviet propaganda of the industrial way of life, based on the chronicles, newspapers and propagandists brochures; in the second part I would like to highlight the cases of Azovstal’, KhTZ (Kharkiv Tractor Plant) and Krivorozstal. The first case is important for us, because it is one of the most bright examples of the reappropriation of the industrial Soviet past. The case of KhTZ is relevant because we have an interesting example of the activism here; and the last, Krivorozstal is relevant for its industrial tourism.
Viktoriya Popovych (University of Alberta)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will explore how the phrase “Glory to Ukraine, Glory to its Heroes” and the Ukrainian flag has been used in response to the Ukraine-Russia war. Looking at these markers of Ukrainian identity, it will be discussed how these markers either unite or divide various sub-groups of Ukrainians.
Paper long abstract:
Ukraine's response to Russia's invasion has caught the world's attention by the people's resilience, wit, and bravery. Many Ukrainians have incorporated and repurposed many cultural symbols and expressions in their daily lives and, most importantly, use these symbols to fight against Russian invaders. One of the main cultural symbols is the Ukrainian flag. At this point in time, many people will recognize the Ukrainian flag as it has become incorporated into many different aspect's of peoples' lives. Many Ukrainians and Ukrainian Supporters have the flag and its associated colors on their houses, cars, clothing, etc. The flag acts as a visible marker of Ukrainian resilience and pride.
An important cultural expression that emerged from the War and from the EuroMaidan in 2014 was the phrase, "Glory to Ukraine, Glory to its Heroes." This phrase was reintroduced into the Ukrainian public lexicon after the Heavenly Hundred Commemoration in 2014 and became the official slogan for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2018. After the start of the war, this phrase became used as a greeting between Ukrainians and is usually used by people who are Pro-Ukrainian. However, the use of this phrase has divided different groups due to its affiliation with Independent Ukrainian Political organizations in the 1900s.
This paper will address how these cultural symbols and cultural expressions either separate or unite groups of Ukrainians and who is considered to be a “true” Ukrainian.
Olga Zaitseva-Herz (University of Alberta)
Paper short abstract:
A video of the Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvniuk announcing his leaving to the front featured the Ukrainian revolutionary song from the beginning of the 20th century. It resulted in the flash mob inspiring bands, including Pink Floyd, to record covers and impacted Ukrainian communities worldwide.
Paper long abstract:
On the example of the Ukrainian song "Oi u Luzi Chervona Kalyna," this presentation demonstrates the role of a song in Ukrainian resistance against Russia's war.
From the day when Russia invaded Ukraine and started its full-scale war on Feb 24, 2022, music has become one of the crucial tools of resistance for the Ukrainian people. A short video of the famous Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvniuk announcing his leaving to the front featured the Ukrainian revolutionary song from the beginning of the 20th century, "Oi u Luzi Chervona Kalyna." Based on the last verse of the cossack song from the 17th century, "Rozlylysia kruti berezhechky," the song was written by Stepan Charnets'kyi in 1914. Later it was extended by Ukrainian priest Grygorii Trukh and became the version that we know under "Oi u Luzi Chervona Kalyna." The small Tik-Tok video resulted in a significant flash mob inspiring bands worldwide, including Pink Floyd, to record its covers.
In 2022 Ukrainians in Ukraine and the refugee camps abroad started singing this song, recording it, and posting it on social media to manifest their patriotic mood and unity with other Ukrainians. On the example of the "Oi u Luzi Chervona Kalyna", this presentation shows how a song can be a powerful tool of support and have multiple deeper meanings for communities all over the world at the same time.