The Department of Comparative Thought and Literature announces an upcoming lecture by:<\/p>\n\n

Maria Sonevytsky<\/strong><\/p>\n

Associate Professor of Anthropology and Music, Bard College<\/p>\n\n

Friday, January 31<\/p>\n

4:15 pm<\/p>\n

Gilman 208<\/p>\n

Download the flyer<\/a><\/p>\n

Since February 2022, many scholars of Russia and Ukraine have asked how far culturalist explanations can get us in comprehending Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the broader stakes of this war for the global order. Musical culture wars have unfolded in multiple theaters: from the Kremlin Orchestra\u2019s staging of Tchaikovsky\u2019s Fourth Symphony (with the programmatic title \u201cFate\u201d) on the ruins of the Mariupol Drama Theater, to the pop-kitsch spectacles of Ukrainian Eurovision contestants. As the Russian state justifies its invasion in culturalist and decolonial terms, as Ukrainians articulate competing visions of how Ukrainian and Russian culture both might be \u201cdecolonized,\u201d and as generations of anti-, post- and decolonial thought become appropriated by opposing camps, the effects can be dizzying.<\/p>\n\n

This lecture contends that Russia\u2019s war of aggression against Ukraine unfolds in an era of decolonial vertigo, and that the arena of musical politics potently exposes some of these disorienting discourses of decoloniality. Teasing apart a few strands of the entangled histories of Ukrainian and Russian musical production alongside the asymmetrical construction of competing nationalisms, this lecture will interrogate rival discourses of greatness and musical supremacy. I observe how the deployment of a revanchist Russian imperial greatness operates as justification for the ongoing stochastic violence conducted by Russia against Ukraine, while questioning the logics of Ukrainian efforts to narrate compensatory histories of greatness under the banner of decolonization. Ultimately, I ask whether there are alternative models by which we might resolve\u2013or at least escape\u2013the escalating \u201cdecolonial\u201d culture wars of our time.<\/p>\n\n

Co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature, the Program in International Studies, the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, and the Critical Grove collective.<\/p>\n\n

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