1st Edition
Ethical and Hermeneutical Reflections on War, Violence, and Responsibility Listening to Ukrainian Voices
This book employs an interdisciplinary lens to help readers understand why Russia invaded Ukraine, as well as why and by what means it continues to wage war against the Ukrainian people, state, nation, culture, and the country’s environmental well-being.
Through listening to, learning from, and analytically engaging Ukrainian intellectuals, Cynthia R. Nielsen in Ethical and Hermeneutical Reflections on War, Violence, and Responsibility: Listening to Ukrainian Voices demonstrates that Russia is not only carrying out an unjust war of aggression against Ukraine but also exposes how its use of (pseudo)History, gender narratives, information warfare, religious discourses, and other forms of propaganda have laid the groundwork for the present war and function to maintain it. By bringing contemporary Ukrainian voices such as Serhiy Zhadan and Olexsandr Myhked into conversation with hermeneutical, moral, and political philosophy and utilizing discourse analysis to explain Russia’s imperial identity, we not only gain a better understanding of why Russia invaded Ukraine, but also a clearer picture of how war in the 21st century impacts human lives and communities, culture, language, the information sphere, as well as the toll it takes on non-human animals and the environment.
This book is an excellent supplement for anyone who is preparing to teach on Ukraine, Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, and the wars in post-modernity.
Introduction 1. Serhiy Zhadan on War-Time, Language, and Poetry After Bucha 2. Why Did Russia Invade Ukraine? 3. History Returns and Has a (Neo)Imperial Rhythm and Rhyme 4. Russia’s Imperial Identity: Origin Myths, Divinizing Narratives, and Discursive Media Strategies 5. Crimes Against the Environment: Russia’s Destruction of the Kakhovka Dam as an Act of Ecocide 6. Oleksandr Mykhed and The Language of War
Biography
Cynthia R. Nielsen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas, where she teaches courses in the areas of hermeneutics, ethics, philosophy of language, aesthetics, contemporary continental philosophy, and the history of philosophy. Her interest in hermeneutics applies to a broad range of topics, including aesthetics, environmental ethics, social and political (mis)uses of language, Ukrainian Studies, philosophy of race and gender, and post- and decolonial studies. Her most recent monograph is Gadamer’s Hermeneutical Aesthetics: On Art as a Performative, Dynamic, Communal, Event (Routledge 2023).
Cynthia Nielsen is a creative scholar who offers here a series of connected essays drawing on disciplines ranging from philosophy to discourse analysis to history and literary studies in order to explicate the Russian war in Ukraine. Readers encounter Ukrainian voices wrestling with the unspeakable. Nielsen’s book is a bold and successful effort to articulate the human experience of life in a time and place of shocking and unjustifiable trauma.
Susan P. McCaffray, Professor Emerita, Department of History, University of North Carolina Wilmington
Adopting fascist tenets, Putin pursues his geopolitical objectives by erasing Ukraine and Ukrainian identity. Cynthia Nielsen offers a meticulous analysis of falsified and manipulative narratives entrenched in Russian society and dexterously employed by the Kremlin in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed, author of Russia’s Denial of Ukraine: Letters and Contested Memory
In this timely and penetrating book, Cynthia Nielsen offers a tautly woven meditation on the power of language during times of war, both in its deceitful capacity to rationalize mass violence and destruction and its ability to articulate hope, debunk falsehood, and affirm stubborn truths.
Michael Gorham, Professor of Russian Studies, University of Florida
