Individual projects
The first decade of Ukraine's independence witnessed the formation of the new social imaginary largely accomplished in the domain of popular culture. The conditions of Ukraine's post-Soviet transformation revealed themselves in the ‘grey' area of potentiality, actually allowing for such formation. The same circumstances also made obvious Ukraine's production and (self-) reproduction as a ‘border' nation. Marichka Burmaka, Iryna Bilyk, Sestrychka Vika, Maryna Odolska, Yulia Lord, Katya Chilly, Liuda Orlenko of DAT and others, who made up the outstanding artistic event of female singer-songwriters, played an influential role in the construction of the new social imaginary, allowing for labeling their creativity as transformative social and artistic practice. The creative efforts of women authors could be read in Walter Mignolo's terms of ‘critical border thinking.'
The current research of Ukraine's (minor) popular culture and the Ukrainian female singer-songwriter tradition takes a close look at the strategies chosen by women authors in their effort to defy the logic of the area. At the same time, it provides an opportunity of considering the condition of a popular culture operating outside the instituted industry. This particular ‘non-Western' circumstance reveals the mechanics by which the resistance potential of popular culture is exploited in major, Western, popular culture.
The project examines Byzantine notions of intellectual curiosity, love for learning, and polymathy and employs them as interpretative keys towards understanding Byzantine concepts of knowledge and the corresponding desire for its acquisition and subsequent promotion and dissemination. Sources include educational miscellanies and literary, scientific, and philosophical texts written between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The methodology relies on a lexicographical inquiry, a historico-philosophical discourse analysis, and the tools of palaeography and codicology
As part of the CAS Advanced Academia Fellowship, I shall complete the second stage of the project (the first was conducted between August 2015 and February 2016), namely, based on an analysis of letters, orations, prefatory pieces, and philosophical essays, the inquiry analyzes how the philosophers constructed their social personae while employing concepts of polymathy and curiosity.
At the end, almost all Hanafi legal works have chapters on local customs (kitab as-siyar, al-hazir wa-l-ibaha). Investigating legal opinions (fatwa) issued by jurists (fuqaha’) in there a historian can reveal unique data which will be useful to shed light on certain aspects of social and economic history of Central Asia. The chronological limits of the study are from the 11th to the 13th century. Preliminary studies on such fatwas show that some settled opinions on local history are to be changed or modified. For example, it was the pre-Mongol Qara Khitay dynasty who first imposed paiza in Central Asia. It’s known that already in mid-12th century Abu-l-Qasim as-Samarqandi (d. 1161) has issued a fatwa regarding permission of wearing paiza by the Muslim population. A critical edition of the relevant chapters from different legal works appears in the appendix “Excerpts from the Original”.
The project deals with the student protest movement that appeared in Bulgaria in October 2013 and resulted in a three-month-long university occupation strike which was part of the broader anti-government protests of 2013-2014. It aims to produce a comprehensive study of the #OccupySU and the Ranobudnite Studenti [Early Rising Students] movement as a case study of post-1989 student activism by a generation of youth born after the demise of communism. Apart from chronicling the student protest movement as it appeared and related to the broader protest movement in 2013-2014, the project will venture into thematic aspects of student occupation strike. It will discuss the organisational problems and goals of the movement through the eyes of its participants as they were reflected within the debates and discussions the students had among themselves. The project will frame the understanding of the then political situation in the country as well as the ideas concerning the role of students and the concept of what constitutes a civil society from the point of view of the activists themselves.
Furthermore, the project will analyse how students perceived themselves as political activists and actors within the movement taking into account age differences, disciplinary backgrounds relating to their choice of study as well as the significant differences relating to gender roles and their mutual perception. Subsequently, the project will venture into a comparative historical dimension by assessing the occupation strike and the Ranobudnite Studenti movement to previous student protests in Bulgaria, most notably in 1990 and 1997. Following this national comparison the project will then place the Bulgarian case within a transnational (in particular Ukraine) and international context in order to gauge to what degree #OccupySU was sui generis and to what extent it paid tribute to and showed similarities with student protests elsewhere. The aim will be to explore whether one can speak of a continuation of characteristics and repertoires and thus type of student protest movement or, conversely, whether a new form or paradigm can be identified.
The focus of my research is the investigation of mental ambivalence (internal conflicts of desire, belief, emotion, etc.), including a detailed analysis of the various modes of ambivalence, be it self-deception or self-overcoming, ambivalent paralysis, or appropriate and creative courses of ambivalent action. The CAS fellowship provides me with the opportunity of completing a manuscript on ambivalence, and since ambivalence cannot be disentangled from our understanding of personhood, rationality, belief, action, and value, it is also a book on these further topics.
The individual person is always interacting with others and my further interest lies in examining the connection between subjectivity and interpersonal relations. On my analysis, relationships with others are constitutive of persons and their attitudes, while at the same time they are undermining of personhood. In exploring this structure, I am also asking what is understanding and what is implied in Kant’s moral imperative, and I analyse diverse phenomena of interpersonal and collective interaction and communication, including various modes of reification, care, and dialogue. The stay in Sofia will also enable me to work on this project.