Historical Memory and Necropolitics in Fiction by Olexandr Irvanets
Authors:   Zaporizhzhia State Medical University, Grebeniuk Tetiana 
Published: May 2023

This article is focused on the literary representation of the historical memory about totalitarian past of Ukraine in dystopias by Olexandr Irvanets. The aim of the research is to analyze how phenomenon of necropolitics, substantiatiated in theory by Cameroonian scholar Achille Mbembe as a sovereignty’s right to decide who can live and who must die, is artistically reflected in Irvanets’s works “Rivne / Rovno (The Wall)”, “Ochamymria”, “Libenkraft’s Disease”, and “Kharkiv 1938”. Achievement of this aim presupposes completion of such tasks: to specify content of the phenomenon of necropolitics in Achille Mbembe’s theory, make clear genre of the above-mentioned works by Olexandr Irvanets, outline nuances of interpretation of Ukraine’s colonial past in the above works, and analyze in which way representation of nectopolitics in these texts is overlapped with the material of Ukrainians’ historical memory. The offered article is particularly relevant, since its key concept, necropolitics, despite its prevalence in social sciences, was utilized in the literary criticism very rarely, and was never used by the moment in the Ukrainian literary studies. Therefore, the analysis of the contemporary Ukrainian writer’s works from the position of the considered theory broadens a range of multidisciplinary approaches to the literary work. Division of the fictional space into open and closed zones, alienation of the shown states from other countries, unlimited power of the state over citizens’ lives and deaths, and display of characters’ corporeality as permanently threatened are the main ways of necropolitics realization in the dystopian worlds of Irvanets’s prose. Social unification, stigmatization of the characters, different from others, their deprivation of unique individuality are considered a symbolical equivalent of physical extermination. In all analyzed works, symbolical, moral destruction is shown as deindividualization of unique personalities, transformation them into obedient faceless mass. Means of this transformation include technological inventions (“thoughts unifying radial aggregate” in the novel “Rivne / Rovno (The Wall)”), common exhausting senseless labor (in the tale “Ochamymria”), political repressions against dissidents (in the novel “Kharkiv 1938”), mysterious and very dangerous disease (in the novel “Libenkraft’s Disease”). The most complete and detailed picture of necropolitical society is artistically represented in the novel “Libenkraft’s Disease” that contains a very high number of scenes of violence. Characteristically, the author puts regulation of the question “who can live and who must die” within human population in one row with the regulation of population size of animals – the impressive scene of dog’s extermination on pages of the work proves it. Like many classical dystopias, the novel has no happy end, moreover, the protagonist who, due to infecting by the Libenkraft’s disease, gains shrewd all-seeing eyes, sees that necropower complete and final victory over individuality.