STUDIES

In Search of Dracula or, Cultures in Dialogue

Lars Kleberg

In Dracula, Bram Stoker's famous Victorian horror novel, the young British lawyer Jonathan Harker sets out on a journey eastward. When the hero crosses the Danube andenters Transylvania in order to finalize a contract with a local count on the purchase of a piece of real estate in London, he notes a number of disquieting details.

Colonial and Postcolonial Aspects of Polish Discourse on the Eastern „Borderlands"

Bogusław Bakuła

In this article I shall discuss works of literary theory and cultural theory published in Poland after 1989 and dedicated to the subject of the so-called Eastern „Borderlands", i.e. the territories to the east of Poland's current border, which at various times in history were part of the Polish state. We have already witnessed a great wave of interest in émigré thinking and literature belonging to the so-called „Borderlands" discourse, and we have also seen a period of intense development in „Borderlands" thinking in such areas as history, literary theory, ethnology and sociology. Almost everything of worth has been reprinted from those works that arose in émigré circles. It is difficult to count the number of conferences, seminars, collective volumes and individual works that have dealt with various aspects of this matter. Many new literary texts, memoirs, scientific and academic works related to this field are still appearing. Several tenth websites established by aficionados of the „Borderlands" can be found on the Internet - currently these constitute a separate communication circle. The „Borderlands" surround us on all sides; I would even go so far as to say that their multiplication and hyperbolization in a country the size of

One Sixth of the World: Avant-garde Film, the Revolution of Vision, and the Colonization of the USSR Periphery during the 1920s (Towards a Postcolonial Deconstruction of the Soviet Hegemony)

Irina Sandomirskaja

Although this article was originally presented at a conference on postcoloniality, I have to begin with a few reservations about the applicability of this term to the territories that were formerly owned or controlled by the USSR, and especially with regard to its Western frontier, i.e. the present-day Baltic States and the states of former Eastern Europe.[1] There are three objections against subsuming these

The Soviet and the Post-Soviet Discourses of Contemporary Ukraine: Literary Scholarship, the Humanities and the Russian-Ukrainian Interface

George G. Grabowicz

The two main topics proposed by this volume-colonialism and postcolonialism on the one hand and Sovietology (which I understand here primarily as the study of the Soviet legacy) on the other-involve broad and important areas which have a special relevance for contemporary Ukraine in general and for Ukrainian studies in particular.

A Language Variety on Trial: Surzhyk Prosecuted and Defended in Post-Soviet Ukrainophone Language Ideology

Niklas Bernsand

The historical legacy of Ukrainian-Russian language contact under imperial conditions - a markedly asymmetrical bilingualism with uneven status relations, sharply differing regional patterns of language use, and heavy interference first and foremost affecting the Ukrainian language - still defines much of the framework for the politics of language in post-Soviet Ukraine. Positions taken in the language ideological debates on Ukrainian-Russian language contact form part of wider narratives on the Ukrainian-Russian cultural encounter, and are intimately connected with conceptualisations of national identity and of nation-building. Language contact and the socio-cultural and political conceptualisations of it in metalinguistic discourse are therefore central topics for the study of language ideologies in Ukraine.

The Negative Auto-Stereotype in Contemporary Ukrainian Discourse on Identity: Some Remarks on the Concept of 'Ukrainian Ghetto'

Aleksandra Hnatiuk

In this paper I shall focus on the negative auto-stereotype found in contemporary Ukrainian discourse concerning identity, and manifested in the concept of the ghetto and its synonyms such as 'a reservation', 'a handicapped minority,' and 'a marginalized culture'. I shall treat this subject as an example of the misunderstandings that can arise through the use of notions taken from postcolonial studies.
My starting-point is a clarification of the notions on which my analysis is based; I shall then discuss population statistics relating to Ukrainians and Russians in Ukraine, and the role of the mother tongue in national identity. For the sake of simplicity, I shall limit myself to a presentation of the views of Mykola Riabchuk and Andrew Wilson.

The Postcolonial Moment in Ukrainian Writing

Myroslav Shkandrij

My own experiences growing up in England and attending university were probably decisive in steering me in the direction of postcolonial studies. Upon entering Cambridge University I was questioned about my background. Learning that I was Ukrainian, one tutor, a Russian émigré, told me that the only difference between Russian and Ukrainian was the letter "h". A Russian, he informed, would say "Glavnyi gorod Galitsiii, eto - Lvov." A Ukrainian, on the other hand, would say "Hlavnyi horod Halitsii, eto - Lvov." When I countered that the correct Ukrainian was: "Holovne misto Halychyny, tse - Lviv," his answer was: "A, net, eto vy po-polski!" (Oh, no, now you're speaking Polish!) A second tutor, an Englishman, immediately began explaining to me that the Cossacks were simply bandits. My response was to cite the evidence of folklore and history showing that they were seen as defenders of a national movement and identity. I should add that these "introductions" to the subject on the part of my

The Experience of Otherness in Polish Poetry After 1990

Anna Kałuża

In Polish poetry written after World War II we can find many traces of a desire of to be settled as well as a need to inhabit a place. These needs and desires are connected with the search for stable meaning and with the perception of space through the category of similarity. We will find few poems that project heterogeneous spaces, poems for which the experience of otherness is constitutive. Contrary to what Levi-Strauss proposes, Polish poetry of the 1960s or later, when the nightmare of the war had become more removed in time, does not enable the reader "to withdraw from the society of men and move into a different society" [Charbonier 2000, 75].
Although the poetry written in these times is concentrated on the idea of community, of the affirmation of a stable order of reality and tradition, encounters with otherness do nevertheless occur. However, the emphasis is placed on the feeling of community identity. The poets of this era feel that they should concentrate on what is eternal, universal, unaffected by time and context. In other words, poetic gestures appear

In the Face of the West and the East – The Formation of the Identity of the Polish Intelligentsia after the End of World War II

Janusz Korek

Why did the monthly periodical published from 1947 in Paris by Jerzy Giedroyc take the name "Kultura" ("Culture")? Researchers must have asked themselves this question automatically. Behind this question there obviously lies the premise that the name of the monthly publication was not chosen at random. This must have been the case if only for the reason that all the periodicals published and edited by Giedroyć before the World War II [Korek 2000, 445-449] had names which clearly represented their character. For example, "Bunt Młodych" ("Youth Rebellion") indicated precisely who its publisher and potential readers were, while "Polityka" ("Politics") clearly defined the sphere of its interests and ambitions. During the first years of "Kultura", the problem of the adequacy of the name was not touched upon, which is symptomatic. It was not until the 1960s that comments began to appear about the

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Holding together Ukraine's East and West: Discourses of Cultural Confrontation and Reconciliation in the Ukrainian Mass Media

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Page 1 of 2

Postcolonial Europe

In Search of Dracula or, Cultures in Dialogue

Colonial and Postcolonial Aspects of Polish Discourse on the Eastern „Borderlands"

One Sixth of the World: Avant-garde Film, the Revolution of Vision, and the Colonization of the USSR Periphery during the 1920s (Towards a Postcolonial Deconstruction of the Soviet Hegemony)

The Soviet and the Post-Soviet Discourses of Contemporary Ukraine: Literary Scholarship, the Humanities and the Russian-Ukrainian Interface

A Language Variety on Trial: Surzhyk Prosecuted and Defended in Post-Soviet Ukrainophone Language Ideology

The Negative Auto-Stereotype in Contemporary Ukrainian Discourse on Identity: Some Remarks on the Concept of 'Ukrainian Ghetto'

The Postcolonial Moment in Ukrainian Writing

The Experience of Otherness in Polish Poetry After 1990

In the Face of the West and the East – The Formation of the Identity of the Polish Intelligentsia after the End of World War II

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