October 18, 2022 at 5 pm on the Microsoft Teams platform will be held the first expert seminar with prof. Eleonora Narvselius from Lund University, Sweden entitled "Bandera Reaffirmed: Scrutinizing Lessons of a Nationalist Symbol in Struggling Ukraine".
Abstract: Using a taxonomy of the lessons of history suggested by Klas-Göran Karlsson, I will explain the evolution of one of the most emotionally charged and politically controversial symbols of modern Ukraine, Stepan Bandera. Bandera went through several incarnations, from the personification of the wartime nationalist movement to playing a role in the symbolic (geo)politics in the Poland-Ukraine-Russia triangle, from a propaganda prop to a pop-cultural meme, and from a local hero to the embodiment of a struggling nation. It is especially instructive to look more closely at how Bandera’s symbolism has been reconsidered and reframed between two core events in the country’s post-Soviet history, namely the Euromaidan in 2014 and the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2022. Arguably, this transformation indicates important shifts in the actual state of public meaning-making in Ukraine, a country that up until now sought for its political identity by negotiating its position within the “triangle of memory” (Poland – Ukraine – Russia), and beyond the triangle of the detrimental “-isms” (Nazism – Soviet autoritarianism – violent nationalism).
Eleonora Narvselius is an anthropologist and an Associate Professor at the Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences of Lund University in Sweden. Her research interests comprise Ukrainian memory culture, narrative analysis, ethnicity, and nationalism. In the course of her academic career, she has participated in several international research projects focusing on the urban environment, memory cultures and the cultural heritage of the East-Central European borderlands. Among her core publications is the book: Ukrainian Intelligentsia in Post-Soviet L’viv: Narratives, Identity and Power (Lexington Books, 2012).
