Ukraine's Quest for Identity Embracing Cultural Hybridity in Literary Imagination, 1991–2011 (англ.)
Марія Реваковіч / науковапраця
Опис:
This study’s pathway from an initial project proposal for a research scholarship at the Kennan Institute in Washington, DC, back in 2003, to its final realization as a published monograph has been unusually long but nonetheless gratifying. Current affairs, be it of political or cultural nature, demand as a rule an immediate reaction if one’s goal is having a contemporaneous critical impact. For a scholar of any contemporary literature, sooner or later there comes a moment of deciding at what point to stop and how to provide a meaningful framework for literary phenomena continuously unfolding. For me that moment came with the celebration of Ukraine’s twentieth anniversary of independence in 2011. However, as I embarked on writing, I soon realized that the first two decades after independence in fact constituted a qualitatively different period as compared to what followed, a period that could be characterized as transitional, hybrid, post-Soviet, or even, in some sense, soul-searching. While working on the book I witnessed an enormous political transformation in Ukraine. In 2012, the Ukrainian Parliament’s adoption of a controversial law on the principles of state language policy, giving Russian the status of a “regional” language, triggered a wave of protests among the Ukrainian-speaking intelligentsia; and then, in the following year, the government’s refusal to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union led to the Revolution of Dignity and war with Russia. To talk about identity formation in this context is qualitatively different from what transpired in this respect during the first two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. By the time I finished writing Ukraine’s Quest for Identity: Embracing Cultural Hybridity in Literary Imagination, 1991–2011, Ukraine managed to celebrate its 25th anniversary of independence despite facing many challenges, and the political situation in the country could not have been more different than when I started writing it back in 2012. Then, the Yanukovych regime increasingly
viii Preface
acted as if its rule were to last in perpetuity, and the ensuing politicization of the cultural sphere invariably contributed to the polarization among intellectual elites, causing rifts, growing unease and making everyone feel on edge.
This study’s pathway from an initial project proposal for a research scholarship at the Kennan Institute in Washington, DC, back in 2003, to its final realization as a published monograph has been unusually long but nonetheless gratifying. Current affairs, be it of political or cultural nature, demand as a rule an immediate reaction if one’s goal is having a contemporaneous critical impact. For a scholar of any contemporary literature, sooner or later there comes a moment of deciding at what point to stop and how to provide a meaningful framework for literary phenomena continuously unfolding. For me that moment came with the celebration of Ukraine’s twentieth anniversary of independence in 2011. However, as I embarked on writing, I soon realized that the first two decades after independence in fact constituted a qualitatively different period as compared to what followed, a period that could be characterized as transitional, hybrid, post-Soviet, or even, in some sense, soul-searching. While working on the book I witnessed an enormous political transformation in Ukraine. In 2012, the Ukrainian Parliament’s adoption of a controversial law on the principles of state language policy, giving Russian the status of a “regional” language, triggered a wave of protests among the Ukrainian-speaking intelligentsia; and then, in the following year, the government’s refusal to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union led to the Revolution of Dignity and war with Russia. To talk about identity formation in this context is qualitatively different from what transpired in this respect during the first two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. By the time I finished writing Ukraine’s Quest for Identity: Embracing Cultural Hybridity in Literary Imagination, 1991–2011, Ukraine managed to celebrate its 25th anniversary of independence despite facing many challenges, and the political situation in the country could not have been more different than when I started writing it back in 2012. Then, the Yanukovych regime increasingly
viii Preface
acted as if its rule were to last in perpetuity, and the ensuing politicization of the cultural sphere invariably contributed to the polarization among intellectual elites, causing rifts, growing unease and making everyone feel on edge.
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