3 - Beyond ‘Narrating the Nation’

Summary

Ukraine is the largest country by territory within the European continent and a global geopolitical flashpoint. At a time of trauma and transition, Ukrainian cultural producers have begun to confront questions of Ukraine’s national identity and linguistic diversity with new urgency and fresh perspective. This chapter sheds light on the evolving dynamic between multilingualism and identity in contemporary Ukrainian culture by employing the practices of both sociological and literary analysis. Through semi-structured interviews and close readings of prominent artistic texts, we focus on the ways in which Ukrainian cultural producers embrace linguistic diversity while simultaneously privileging the Ukrainian language and promoting national consolidation in wartime. This ‘practical multilingualism’ is particularly evident in literary and cinematic dialogues that feature characters discussing their belonging to Ukraine across languages. In the field of nationalism studies, such ‘scenes of talk’ (Herman 2006) invite a reassessment of the almost exclusive emphasis on narrative in analyses of the role of culture in the life of the nation.