Oles Barlih: Queering Myths for Legitimization

• In Event: Contemporary Ukrainian Literature: The Frontiers of Freedom

Abstract

Literary critic Solomiia Pavlychko claims that in the formerly colonial and totalitarian Ukrainian society, the search for a modern ideal involves revisiting the once-forbidden historical past and looking toward the West (2002), and what Hundorova (2013) called the desacralization of literature initiated by post-modernism–in other words departing from traditional literary norms and themes is a part of that search for an ideal. This raises the crucial question of whether that departure from tradition encompasses queer narratives recently created in contemporary Ukrainian literature. Such narratives can be studied as constructs–not as inherently natural or “original”, as Judith Butler (1990) put it–to help us better understand how the traditional gender categories are challenged in literature. The emergence of gender-nonconforming and queer narratives contributes to the broader legitimization of queerness in literature. In this paper, the plays of Oles Barlih from the collection Zviri podivliatsa zamist tebe are analyzed to identify textual and intertextual devices that legitimize queerness and present queer characters as acts of cultural activism. The analysis will focus on the origin and evolution of homoerotic narratives and characters and forms of intertextual playfulness, such as pastiche parody, and burlesque to reflect on the role of traditional society in gender identity. In contrast to the claims of representations of queerness as internally paradoxical or infantile (Shyber 2021 & Riabchenko 2015), I argue that Barlih’s strong and phantasmagorical characters in his works help foster a climate for queer liberation, challenging patriarchal constraints of Ukrainian cultural norms in the critical aftermath of the Euromaidan events and amidst ongoing war.

Author

• Ali Karakaya, Stanford U