Contribution short abstract:

A major issue impacting the historical and aesthetic truth surrounding the Russian-Ukrainian war is the boundaries between the (un)spoken narratives. Which themes create traumatic accounts of life under occupation? How is the war experience of encountering the "other" communicated (non-)verbally?

Contribution long abstract:

The main source of the report consists of oral accounts of the Russian-Ukrainian war, which I recorded from 2022 to 2024. I will debate "taboo" topics and motifs that point to the hushed (quiet as dumbness, silence as the absence of someone who is present) based on hermeneutical and comparative analysis with other narratives about the occupation. The life stories of a father, daughter, and son from the Kherson region, reflecting on their subjective experiences of the war, serve as the basis for discussing the issue of the ‘limits of representation’ (Ankersmit) of traumatic memories and the truth about the war. The study begins with the thesis that ‘in contrast to trauma, language is ambivalent’ (Assman), and the ‘truth’ of life stories depends on genre, convention and memory.

Each narrative is analyzed in the categories of ‘spoken - unspoken’ using structural, linguistic analysis of interview episodes. The narrators employ various rhetorical devices to convey experiences of contact with the occupiers. Through direct questions, modal words, and vocabulary of aggression and dissent, it is demonstrated how the use of language marks "breaks" in consciousness and the inability to give a complete description of the ‘other’ as ‘alien’. The analyses of trauma images are focused on how people communicate their emotional reactions, feelings, and sounds that are expressed orally. I will demonstrate how communicative resources aimed at establishing optimal linguistic contact between the narrator and the listener are a way to point out the truth and everyday life and the untellable.