Psychosocial and Cultural Perspectives on the War in Ukraine

Bohdan Shumylovych is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the Ukrainian Catholic University. He also works at the Center for Urban History in Lviv, Ukraine.Magdalena Zolkos is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

‘This beautifully wrought, multi-layered, multivocal book captures the imprint of the “war experience” in Ukraine: on the body and the soul, on sense and memory (collective and singular), on knowing and unknowing, on loss, care, ruin, and survival. It challenges the very notion of trauma’s “inability to be represented” by taking the time to dwell in the lived realities and dreamscapes of civilians for whom war is an enduring experience. Drawing upon visual, personal, philosophical, and historiographic approaches, the contributors paint for us a complex yet intimate portrait of people facing precarity and violence who, nonetheless and despite, remain in place.’Jeanne Morefield, Associate Professor at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, UK‘Psychosocial and Cultural Perspectives on the War in Ukraine: Imprints and Dreamscapes brings together diaries, testimonies, visual material documenting the war and its effects on an individual life. This raw material of war is set in the elaborated analytical framework that draws on psychoanalysis, philosophy, sociology, and cultural studies and helps the readers to understand the workings of war through the human existence. A powerful book which will leave a haunting and unforgettable imprint in anyone who reads it.’Yuliya Yurchuk, Assistant Professor at Södertörn University, Sweden‘This is a deeply moving and highly relevant collection. It is good to see nuanced thought in these troubling times.’Astrid Erll, Professor at Goethe University Frankfurt and The Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform, Germany

• Introduction Part I: Recording Lived Experiences of War through Diaries, Images and Dreams Chapter 1. Collective Practice of Meditation and Phenomenology of Consciousness in War Chapter 2. ‘The Production of Fireflies’. Searching for Truth and Truthfulness in the Diaries and Images of War, Conversation with Bohdan Shumylovych Chapter 3. The Emotional and Psychological Registers of War, Conversation with Natalka Ilchyshyn EXCERPTS FROM DIARIES OF WAR AND LIFE (1) Part II: The Ruptures and Ruins of War Chapter 4. Dreaming of War Chapter 5. ‘The Word Remains’. War Diaries in Ruptured Time and Space Chapter 6. The Image in Ruins Chapter 7. Quiet Trauma and the War in Ukraine EXCERPTS FROM DIARIES OF WAR AND LIFE (2) Part III: Resistance, Endurance, Testimony Chapter 8. Unexpected Shapes of Courage: Emotions of Resistance in Ukraine Chapter 9. The Determination to Resist. Dumky by Young Ukrainians Chapter 10. Testimony, Endurance, Tryvoga: A History Open to Shivering Bodies