Borders and Liminality in Contemporary Ukrainian Dramaturgy about the Chornobyl Zone

Yakovenko, Iryna (2024) Borders and Liminality in Contemporary Ukrainian Dramaturgy about the Chornobyl Zone Колективна (три і більше авторів). Dominanty tematyczne InNosci w dyskursach literackish I kulturowych po 1989 roku: Monograph. Uniwersytet Przyrodniczo-Humanistyczny w Siedlcach, Poland, Siedlce, Poland.

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Abstract

The research offers a reading of Neda Nezhdana’s dramatic quest, Lost Fugitives, and Pavlo Arie’s play At the Beginning and End of Times. It analyzes literary representations of self-settlers and refugees in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. The dramaturgy of Ukrainian writers is interpreted through the prism of anthropological and sociocultural aspects of the liminal experience and in the context of the Chornobyl literary studies. Liminality is regarded as a transitional stage, an ambiguous state which is ‘betwixt and between’ assigned by law, custom, convention, and thus belonging to different states, on the border, or crossing the threshold (limen). In the essay, the Chornobyl Zone in the plays is analyzed as a liminal space, and the concept of liminality is applied to the realm of spatiality and temporality while focusing on representations of abandonment, sense of isolation, existence in-between in cyclic rather than linear time. The Chornobyl setting and life of the plays’ characters in the Zone are regarded as the ‘new unknown’, or the transitional stage from the familiar to the ‘new normal’ which is to be achieved. In their literary works, Pavlo Arie and Neda Nezhdana pose the questions: What does it feel like to live in the liminal place, which is the Chornobyl Zone of Exclusion? How does the human mind adapt to life outside fixed and familiar societal models? For the characters who come to live in the Zone for various reasons, the ‘old normal’ was life before the Chornobyl disaster. Their current way of life is retardment or freezing in the transitional stage. Both playwrights, Pavlo Arie and Neda Nezhdana, depict affective dimensions of life in the Zone representing multi-faceted aspects, such as the Zone as homeland, as a place for escape and recluse, and as a transition point to a ‘new and transformed life’.

Item Type: Monograph (Колективна (три і більше авторів))
Uncontrolled Keywords: Chornobyl literature; Ukrainian dramaturgy; liminality studies; the liminal; the limen; Pavlo Arie; Neda Nezhdana.
Subjects: Монографії > Видані за кордоном (в країнах ОЕСР та мовами ЄС або українською)
Divisions: Факультет романо-германської філології > Кафедра лінгвістики та перекладу
Depositing User: Ірина Василівна Яковенко
Date Deposited: 11 Dec 2024 12:31
Last Modified: 11 Dec 2024 12:31
URI: https://elibrary.kubg.edu.ua/id/eprint/50589

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