Ukrainian Literature: Between Ukraine and Literature.

This article is dedicated to the anthology Solomon’s Red Star (2012), which contains 25 essays describing 25 administrative regions of contemporary Ukraine. Different rhetorical strategies presented by authors are analyzed from a postcolonial perspective. The most important elements of the postcolonial narrative are a notion of a literature as a mirror of reality and understanding of a narrative as a kind of a travelogue, when the author acts as a guide and the reader is supposed to be a tourist. A narrative is mostly past-oriented but not future-oriented and the main challenge to the authors is that a history is neither coherent nor complete. A post-soviet stereotype-based narrative is opposed by a mythological poetics as a means of creating a new cultural identity.

A man functions in a given area and significant places. The area, on one hand, reflects the way of thinking about the world, and on the other it expresses social life in its arrangement, at the same time serving as a mean to reproduce social relations. Thus, a man who utilises it and creates it is the one that enters it on basis of various types of relations. It can take shape of cultural space perceived as physical realm that carries cultural reality (a set of significances and signs). A cultural space understood like that entails the category of space, which (as a place of significance with its historicalness and rationality) plays key part on the process of shaping one’s identity. The culture of place at the same time fulfils unifying, directing and standardizing function of the social relations. Given the multicultural character of the place interculturalism is crucial, and within its framework the cross-cultural potential of individuals shaping intercultural space in a culturally diverse local setting. A man enters relations with the place whereas the place creates an area of mutual coexistence with the man. The Vilnius region is a place significant for its inhabitants, as it constitutes a cultural community located in the cultural borderland. The factors that condition it entail common cultural legacy, localness, interaction and sense of familiarity. They are accompanied by the skills of recognizing cultural legacy, followed by interactional competences and multi-dimensional growth. Cognition and understanding therefore shall be considered as the key elements of establishing a community at the meeting points of cultures, i.e. intercultural area. They should be favoured by actions undertaken in the local environment, by the mean of, for instance, folk art, folk culture, that both provide with cultural, educational and pedagogical functions.

Autor niniejszego artykułu stawia sobie za cel analizę wpływu współczesnej transformacji przestrzeni oraz jej postrzegania na relacje władzy politycznej. Kontekst przestrzenny władzy sprowadza zarówno do jej korelatów materialnych, jak i niematerialnych, gdzie składają się na nią także konstrukty wytwarzane społecznie. W pierwszej kolejności przedmiotem analizy staje się więc wyróżnienie wzajemnych relacji między tak określonymi fenomenami. W dalszej części autor uwydatnia zjawisko dywersyfikacji źródeł władzy oraz analizuje jej dynamikę jako zasadniczą konsekwencję heterogenicznego charakteru przestrzeni. Na tej podstawie wyciąga wnioski teoretyczne, które mają stać się przydatne w badaniach empirycznych, a ponadto proponuje jeden z możliwych kierunków pożądanego organizowania władzy we współczesnych demokracjach.

The discourse of space - the space of discourse. the image of the city in Druga Venecija (The other Venice: secrets of the city) by Predrag Matvejević

the author of this article reconstructs the image of Venice depicted in the novel-essay Druga Venecija (The Other Venice: Secrets of the City) by Predrag Matvejević. the novel is characterised by multilingualism (loanwords from the Italian language and its dialects) and contributions from other arts (numerous illustrations, maps, photo reprints, etc.). the discursive mechanisms shaping the impression of space and the world that is represented, as well as the nonlinguistic (visual) ways of its reproduction, are analysed in the article. the narration of the novel is deprived of plot, as it is essayistic and dehistoricised. The book incorporates different genres, combining elements of the essay, travelogue novels, encyclopaediae, and portolan charts. It is characterised by minimalism and restrained language, which are distinguishing features of Matvejević’s work. the poetics of minimalism is reflected in the fragmentation of the plot, the selectivity of themes, and the simplicity of style. the writer concentrates on presenting the details, exploring unknown areas that are overlooked in other literary descriptions of Venice. the originality of Matvejević’s creative method is based on tracking down abandoned, non-obvious, and devastated places; the book, therefore, describes the passages of the city, referring random information and fragments of other stories and legends. enumeration is the most frequent figure of speech used by the writer to describe phenomena in a synchronous and non-hierarchical way. the starting point for the considerations made in this article are the philosophical concepts of the relationship of semiotic systems and different types of art (both applied and fine) to the category of spatiality (Derrida, Rewers, eco, taine).

Cinematic images of the Donbas space after 2014 in selected war-themed films

The paper aims to analyse the spatial representation in contemporary Ukrainian films created after 2014, set in the Donbas region and revolving around the ongoing war. As I reference the specific spatial context, my analysis is grounded in the framework of spatial turn. It also is crucial for me to delve into the history of Donbas and the portrayals of this place in Ukrainian cinematography. Film ecocriticism constitutes a significant context, particularly concerning representations of natural and postindustrial landscapes, often ravaged by human actions, especially in the context of warfare. Referring to the concept of landscape, I rely on Arnold Berleant’s perspective, noting that culturally transformed landscapes hold the same value as natural ones, and every landscape contributes to shaping cultural traditions. In my study, I employ textual film analysis derived from general structural analysis. My considerations encompass productions, such as Klondike (2022) directed by Maryna Er Gorbach, Reflection (2021) and Atlantis (2019), both directed by Valentyn Vasyanovych, as well as Bad Roads (2020) directed by Natalia Vorozhbyt.