Present in the Past: Instrumentalisation of the Past in Memory, Mass Culture, and Self-Presentations

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The panel examines how the historical past can be instrumentalized in memory and popular culture, especially in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The papers of this panel are exploring: how contemporary Ukrainian pop culture deconstructs the ideology of the “Russian world” amid the full-scale Russo-Ukrainian war through memes, caricatures, songs, cartoons, merchandise, and graffiti; how the surge of curiosity about the history of Kyiv, which have appeared in Ukraine since 2022 continues the centuries-old tradition of glorifying the capital of Ukraine and how it can also be interpreted as a deprovincializing mechanism that meets the unprecedented demand for the proud worthy history of the Ukrainian capital while denying Russian encroachments on it; the history of the Pochaiv Lavra, the second most important Orthodox monastery in Ukraine, a bastion of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, Greek Catholicism, and Russian Orthodoxy, in the present (2022–2025) views of the monastery as a bridge uniting the Orthodox and Greek Catholics of Ukraine in the process of decolonization of the Ukrainian religious shrine.

This panel aims to take a comprehensive look at how historical narratives migrate, evolve and interact in contemporary information field. Complementary to each other, presented studies shed light on relevant challenges for the ideological instrumentalization of the past in collective memory and popular culture in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Hanna Filipova, U of Gothenburg (Sweden)

Papers

• Deconstructing the 'Russian World': Pop Culture as Resistance in the Russo-Ukrainian War - Liudmyla Pidkuimukha, Justus Liebig U Giessen (Germany)

• Self-Presentation in the Time of War: Kyiv and Its (Legendary) Past in Books and Performances of 2022−2025 - Svitlana Potapenko, Inst of Ukrainian Archeography and Source Studies NASU (Ukraine)

• Pochayiv Monastery in the Past and Present as an Example of Instrumentalization of Religious Memory - Walentyna Los, Jagiellonian U (Poland)

Discussant

• Kateryna Kobchenko, Taras Shevchenko National U of Kyiv (Ukraine)

Session Manager

• Benedict Edward DeDominicis, Catholic U of Korea (South Korea)