Ukrainian, Russophone, (Other) Russian - Hybrid Identities and Narratives in Post-Soviet Culture and Politics

What is the role and position of Russophone/Russian culture in Ukraine today? How can the dynamics of Ukrainian culture lend insight into the possibility of a global Russian culture, or multiple Russian cultures, in the contemporary world? The author responds to these questions by investi-gating the interplay between literature, politics, market, and identity in the contemporary Ukrainian cultural process (1991-2018). This book explores the contested encounters of the Russian language and culture with other languages, cultures, and traditions in the post-Soviet space, highlighting pressing contemporary issues related to-and affected by-political and social developments.

List of contents

Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration
Introduction: From (Global) Russian to Ukrainian
Culture-and Back Again
From Russianness to Russophonia
In-between (Literary) Russophonia
Recasting "Ukrainianness" through the Prism of "Russianness"
The Long Road to Post-Soviet Transition: A Russophone
Perspective
Part I: From Culture to Politics-Displaced Hybridity/ies
(1991-2013)
Chapter 1 The Missing Hybridity: Framing the
Ukrainian Cultural Space
Ukraine: A Laboratory of Political and Cultural Identity/ies
Shifting Social Dynamics in Post-Soviet Ukraine
New (Old?) Cultural Standards in the Post-Soviet Era
Post-Soviet Russophonia in Ukraine: An Intellectual (and
Political) Debate
In Search of a New Self-Determination
Chapter 2 Post-Soviet (Russophone) Ukraine Speaks Back 81
Ukrains'ka Rosiis'komovna literatura versus Rosiis'ka literatura
Ukrainy
The Self-Identification in Post-Soviet Ukrainian Literature in
Russian
At the Intersection of Two Cultural Models
From Marginality to Minority
Chapter 3 A Minor Perspective on National Narrative(s):
Deterritorializing Post-Imperial Epistemology
Andrei Kurkov: The Displaced Transition in Mass Literature
Of Other Spaces (and Of Other Times): Aleksei Nikitin's
Literary Heterotopias
Vladimir Rafeenko: The Ukrainian "Magical Realism"
Part II: From Politics to Culture-After Revolution of
Hybridity (2014-2018)
Chapter 4 Hybridity Reconsidered: Ukrainian Border
Crossing after the "Crisis"
Dialectic of Transition from Post-Soviet to Post-Maidan:
Between Old and New Narratives
Moving Centripetally: Reconsidering Hybridity
The (Political) Acceleration of Cultural Change
Chapter 5 Values for the Sake of the (Post-Soviet)
Nation
Towards Shifting Cultural Policies in the Post-Maidan Era
Envisioning Identity Markers after the Ukraine Crisis
At the Crossroads between Normative Measures and Blurred
Cultural Boundaries in the Post-Soviet Space
Chapter 6 Towards a Postcolonial Ethics: Rewriting
Ukraine in the "Enemy's Language"
Demistifying Anticolonial Myths: The "Ukrainian Russians"
Transgressing the (National) Code: Recasting History and
Language in Light of War
The End of the Transition?
In Place of a Conclusion: The Future of "Russianness"
in Post-Maidan Ukraine
Bibliography
Index

About the author

Marco Puleri is Research Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna. His research interests include contemporary Russian and Ukrainian sociocultural developments and nation-building in the post-Soviet area.

Report

This book will be of interest to anyone working in the field of post-Soviet studies or interested in post-Soviet subjectivities, in that it makes a clear case for others to consider hybridity as an analytical tool in their studies of post-Soviet contexts. (Anna Vozna, Ab Imperio, 2020/4, 336-340)

Marco Puleri's 291-page book reframes the simplified notions of identity clashes in Ukrainian society and demystifies the perception of Ukrainian Russophonia [...] The volume can be considered as an indispensable read for both students of social sciences and humanities, as well as for researchers interested in the subject (Géza Barta, Eurasian Geography and Economics, 2021)

Marco Puleri's book is a thought-provoking study which for the first time consequently maps the Russophone literature from Ukraine as a hybrid discourse and a liminal cultural practice. (Alexander Chertenko, Ideology and Politics Journal, 2 (16), 2020: 382-391)

This book is an excellent attempt in unmasking the current situation of Ukrainian culture. This book will appeal to scholars of both Ukraine and Russia, helping to set the stage for future analysis of identity in greater post-Soviet space. (Dexter Blackwell, H-Net Reviews, July 2021).

[...] diese Arbeit einen äußerst wichtigen Beitrag zur gegenwärtigen Slawistik mit ihren Teildisziplinen dar. Neben seinen konkreten, überaus (er-) kenntnisreichen Analysen, die sowohl für RussistInnen als auch für UkrainistInnen von großem Interesse sein werden, liefert seine Arbeit dringend notwendige Impulse für die konzeptionelle Weiterentwicklung, ja vielleicht sogar Neuausrichtung der zukünftigen Slawistik im Allgemeinen und der Russistik im Besonderen. (Miriam Finkelstein, Anzeiger für Slavische Philologie, (XLVII) 2019, 187-196)

A rendere originale e pionieristico questo contributo sono non solo l'oggetto di studi e la cospicua mole di letteratura specialistica con cui intraprende un proficuo dialogo critico, bensì anche il fatto di fornire una prospettiva sui più recenti sviluppi socioculturali in Ucraina dal punto di vista degli intellettuali russofoni e della loro produzione letteraria; il volume costituisce pertanto una lettura che risulterà assai utile non solo per chi si interessi di Ucraina, ma per chiunque voglia conoscere meglio le complesse sfaccettature della realtà culturale dei paesi post-sovietici (Fabio De Leonardis, Nazioni e regioni, 16, 2020, 76-78).

Product details

• Authors: Marco Puleri
• Assisted by: Dirk Uffelmann (Editor)
• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.01.2020
• EAN: 9783631816622
• ISBN: 978-3-631-81662-2
• No. of pages: 294
• Dimensions: 175 mm x 24 mm x 217 mm
• Weight: 451 g
• Series: Postcolonial Perspectives on Eastern Europe
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics