Course Co-Directors: Elżbieta Kwiecińska (Polish Academy of Sciences) and Hanna Perekhoda (University of Lausanne)
Academic research has long shown that nations and borders are not timeless facts but historical and social constructions. But in a context where violent border revision is being normalized, such arguments can be stripped of their meaning and reused against the very societies whose survival depends on the protection of those institutions. The question, of course, is not whether critique is necessary, but how to sustain a critical analysis of modern political categories (nation, sovereignty, territory, borders, etc.) without allowing that critique to serve anti-modernist and imperialist political projects. The broader issue, then, is how scholars could contribute to preserving normative and political conditions that make their critical thinking possible instead of undermining them. Ukraine serves as the central case through which to analyze broader processes of territorial imagination and boundary-making in Eastern Europe and beyond.
During our seminar, we will particularly raise such questions as:
- how borders and spatial imaginaries have been produced, contested, and naturalized in Ukraine and wider (post)imperial contexts;
- the limitations of interpreting borders and spaces solely as social constructs and will emphasize the agency of the individuals who inhabit these areas;
- the metaphor of Ukraine as a borderland or a frontier and how it can be reinterpreted during wartime.