Imagining Ukraine: From History and Myths to Maidan Protests

Abstract

This article examines how the Maidan protests of 2013–2014 were a space for the collision of conflicting narratives on what Ukraine is and what it should be, and how past, present, and future were used to imagine contemporary Ukraine. Making use of speech acts by local and international actors and politicians on the Ukraine crisis, historical narratives on Ukraine, Maidan protest slogans, and field work data gathered throughout 2013–2016 in Ukraine, we identify four meta-narratives that enable us to unravel such an imagining: (1) Ukraine as a liminal category between East and West; (2) Ukraine as Russia, Ukraine as non-Russia; (3) Ukraine as Europe, Ukraine as non-Europe; and (4) Ukraine as Ukraine. We trace and contextualize these narratives in four separate sections. Positing all narratives in a discursive battleground and problematizing them as a struggle between stories, the article demonstrates that the imagining of contemporary Ukraine is deeply conditioned by the conflict between all four narratives. Ukraine is simultaneously all and none of them.

The Political Reasons for Russia’s Preference for Taking Control Over Ukraine

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The Screen and the Street: Two Face(t)s of Ukrainian Popular Biopolitics

“…The first -and the most obvious -concerns the manipulative functions of products of popular geo-and biopolitics. Servant of the People engenders a peculiar cultural imagination (Musliu & Burlyuk, 2019) that privileges some elements of reality over others (Shepherd, 2017, p. 215) and serves as a tool for political marketing or political communication rather than representation (Street, 2012, p. 351). Indeed, "[t]he actors who actually create this space of appearance represent a segment of the population or the public without formally being mandated to do so.…”

Where the Personal is (Geo)Political: Performing Queer Visibility in Georgia in the Context of EU Association

“…Although not entitled to membership, they are expected to conform to the EU's Self-image, by accepting particular standards of 'good life' while drifting away from Russia (Browning and Christou 2010). This condition, whereby Georgia remains split in-between the West and its 'bad' subaltern empire copy, ties in with the postcolonial concept of liminality (Bhabha 1984;Kakabadze 2016;Musliu and Burlyuk 2019;Morozov and Rumelili 2012). Kakabadze (2016) identified Georgia's liminality as part of a struggle between two discourses regarding the country's place in the world: the dominant liberal discourse and the nationalist/populist one.…”