Writing around War: Parapolemics, Trauma, and Ethics in Ukrainian Representations of the War in the Donbas
Journal: East/West Journal of Ukrainian Studies
Year: 2022

The article considers a range of literary texts about the war in Donbas and argues that one of the primary representational strategies employed by Ukrainian writers has been the use of “parapolemics.” The article operates with Kate McLoughlin’s definition of this term as a focus on the “outskirts” of armed conflict, but also relates the idea to concepts drawn from trauma studies. While, on the one hand, the use of parapolemics may be a way of avoiding direct representation of wartime violence an