Search for Self: Bridging the Broken Continuity of Ukrainian Cultural Memory in ‘Amadoka’ by S. Andrukhovych and ‘Forgottenness’ by T. Maliarchuk

• In Event: Exploring Cultural Memory: Collection, Construction, and Continuity in Modern Ukrainian Literature

Abstract

This paper analyzes the role of cultural memory as a means of navigating the path to self-discovery. By offering various ways of bridging the broken continuity of memory, Sophia Andrukhovych and Tania Maliarchuk create narratives in which their characters engage in the process of reconstructing memory on both individual and cultural levels, aiming to overcome physical and psychological ailments, and address transgenerational gaps.
Amadoka offers a narrative made up of fragments of cultural (museum, archive, cemetery), family (photographs, retellings, and memoirs), and individual (scars, diaries, social media) memory. The paper demonstrates how "embodied memory" (Paul Connerton) – with its practices of recording and involvement – is used to restore cultural memory. In Forgottenness by Tania Maliarchuk the narrator attempts to bridge the transgenerational gap by studying the "case" of Viacheslav Lypyns’kyi in order to find her own roots.
The study highlights that both novels emphasize the themes of forgetting (through choosing to forget, altering reality, or creating secondary or screen memories) and silencing, which leads to broken memory. The paper argues that contemporary Ukrainian literature demonstrates the need for cultural anchors, home, and continuity of memory.
The methodology of the research is based on the findings of memory studies (Assmann, A., Assmann, J., Bennett, T., Connerton, P., Craps S., Lachmann R., Nora, P.).

Author

• Olena Saikovska, U of Tübingen (Germany)