Subalterns That Sing: Fighting the War, Overcoming Peripheriality in Central Europe

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The panel focuses on musical production in Central Europe in response to the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It is argued that, along with artistic expression and channeling emotions, the musical domain became yet another venue of the geocultural fight for visibility, recognition, and hegemony. The panel presents an interdisciplinary pursuit that combines musicology, cultural diplomacy, and postcolonial studies: the presenters zoom into the political use of musical means on the global stage where Ukraine and a broader region attempt to escape the position of a multiple subaltern in the shadow of several centers of power to elevate their geopolitical standing and garner support for the Ukrainian cause. The cases vary from the Eurovision Song Contest to professional artistic communities in Ukraine and abroad to expose the conflation of professional and civic positions in wartime when fights are waged simultaneously on the frontline and in multiple symbolic domains.

Sub Unit

• Arts II: Music, Theater, Performance Studies

Chair

• Laada M. Bilaniuk, U of Washington

Papers

• Musical Diplomacy in Wartime Ukraine: Manifesting Geocultural Agency on Stage - Valeria Korablyova, Charles U in Prague (Czech Republic)

• Liberating from the ‘Russian World’: Decolonization in Musical Creation in Ukraine after 2022 - Louisa Martin-Chevalier, Sorbonne U (France)

• The Czech and Ukrainian Musical Responses to the Threat to National Sovereignty: A Decolonial Perspective - Tereza Havelková, Charles U in Prague (Czech Republic)

Discussant

• Laada M. Bilaniuk, U of Washington