Ivan Kozlenko’s Tanzher and the Odesa Myth: Multidirectional Memory As a Strategy of Subversion
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21226/ewjus605Keywords:
Ukrainian literature, Odesa, urban myth, multidirectional memory, postmodernist intertextuality, alternative canons, queer writingAbstract
Ivan Kozlenko’s novel Tanzher (Tangier) became one of Ukraine’s biggest cultural events of 2017, vigorously debated in the country’s media and shortlisted for multiple prizes. This ambitious Ukrainian-language novel by a native of a predominantly Russophone city is simultaneously a love letter to Odesa and a daring subversion of the superficial version of the city’s popular myth, widely disseminated both by mass media and by scholarly discourse. A novel whose plot centres on two pansexual love triangles, one taking place in the 1920s, the other in the early 2000s, Tangier employs strategies of intertextual engagement and multidirectional memory to construct an alternative affirming narrative. It focuses on the episodes in Odesa’s history during Ukraine’s wars of independence in 1918–20 and the time it served as Ukraine’s capital of filmmaking in the 1920s and seeks to reinsert this queer-positive narrative into the national literary canon. This article analyzes the project of utopian transgression the novel seeks to enact and situates it both in the domestic socio-cultural field and in the broader contexts of global countercultural practices. It also examines the challenges faced by post-communist societies struggling with the new conservative turn in national cultural politics.
Downloads
References
Babloian, Zaven. Facebook, 15 Oct. 2020, https://www.facebook.com/zaven.babloyan/posts/10157953428062933. Accessed 2 Dec. 2021.
Badiou, Alain. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Translated by Peter Hallward, Verso, 2001.
“BBC Ukraïna oholosyla korotki spysky Knyhy roku BBC-2017.” BBC News Ukraïna, 5 Dec. 2017, https://www.bbc.com/ukrainian/features-42234612. Accessed 2 Dec. 2021.
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. Oxford UP, 1973.
Boldyriev, Oleksandr. Odes'ka hromada: Istorychnyi narys pro ukrains'ke natsional'ne vidrodzhennia v Odesi u 70-ti rr. XIX-pochatku XX st. Maiak, 1994.
Chernetsky, Vitaly. “Identity Quests: Postcolonial Journeys in Contemporary Ukrainian Writing.” Postcolonial Slavic Literatures after Communism, edited by Dirk Uffelmann and Klavdia Smola, Peter Lang, 2016, pp. 327–46.
Chernetsky, Vitaly. “The Trope of Displacement and Identity Construction in Postcolonial Ukrainian Fiction.” Journal of Ukrainian Studies, vol. 27, nos. 1–2, 2002, pp. 215–32, https://cius-archives.ca/items/show/1167. Accessed 1 Apr. 2022.
Chernetsky, Vitaly. “Ukrainian Queer Culture: The Difficult Birth.” Queer Stories of Europe, edited by Kārlis Vērdiņš and Jānis Ozoliņš, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016, pp. 206–25.
Czaplicka, John, editor. Lviv: A City in the Crosscurrents of Culture. Harvard UP, 2005.
Dorosh, Svitlana. “Pys'mennyk Ivan Kozlenko: odes'ka identychnist'—tse mif.” BBC News Ukraïna, 8 Nov. 2017, https://www.bbc.com/ukrainian/features-41805334. Accessed 2 Dec. 2021.
Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. “Infection in the Sentence: The Woman Writer and the Anxiety of Authorship.” The Madwoman in the Attic, edited by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Yale UP, 1979, pp. 45–92.
Grabowicz, George G. Towards a History of Ukrainian Literature. Harvard UP, 1981.
Herlihy, Patricia. Odessa: A History, 1794–1914. Harvard UP, 1991.
Herlihy, Patricia. Odessa Recollected: The Port and the People. Academic Studies Press, 2018.
Hnatiuk, Ola. Courage and Fear. Translated by Ewa Siwak, Academic Studies Press, 2019.
Hundorova, Tamara. The Post-Chornobyl Library: Ukrainian Postmodernism in the 1990s. Translated by Sergiy Yakovenko, Academic Studies Press, 2019.
Iakovlev, Vadym. Tam, de pochynaiet'sia terytoriia. Kaiala, 2020.
Iareshchenko, Oleksandr. Odes'ka “Prosvita”: Istoriia, suchasnist'. Maiak, 1998.
Kharkiv: The City of Diversity. Special issue of East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, Volodymyr Kravchenko and Oleksiy Musiyezdov, guest editors, Svitlana (Lana) Krys, chief editor, vol. 7, no. 1, 2019, https://ewjus.com/index.php/ewjus/issue/view/17. Accessed 1 Apr. 2022.
Khersons'kyi, Borys (Boris Khersonskii). “Odes'kyi syndrom.” Klaptykova kovdra, Dukh i litera, 2016, pp. 179–216.
Khersons'kyi, Borys (Boris Khersonskii). Odesskaia intelligentsiia. Folio, 2018.
Khersons'kyi, Borys (Boris Khersonskii). Stalina ne bulo. Folio, 2018.
Kozlenko, Ivan. Tanzher. Komora, 2017.
Makaryk, Irena, and Virlana Tkacz, editors. Modernism in Kyiv: Jubilant Experimentation. Toronto UP, 2010.
Mikhailik, Iurii, compiler. Vol'nyi gorod: Stikhi. Maiak, 1991.
Pavlychko, Solomiia. “Chy potribna ukrains'komu literaturoznavstvu feministychna shkola?” Slovo i chas, no. 6, 1991, pp. 10–15.
Pavlychko, Solomiia. Dyskurs modernizmu v ukrains'kii literaturi. 2nd ed., Lybid', 1999.
Pavlyshyn, Marko. “Aspects of the Literary Process in the USSR: The Politics of Recanonization in Ukraine after 1985.” Southern Review, vol. 21, no. 1, 1991, pp. 12–25.
Pavlyshyn, Marko. “Literary Travel: Ukrainian Journeys toward the National and the Modern.” Australian Slavonic and East European Journal, vol. 23, nos. 1–2, 2009, pp. 1–18.
Pavlyshyn, Marko. “The Rhetoric of Geography in Ukrainian Literature, 1991–2005.” Ukraine, the EU, and Russia: History, Culture and International Relations, edited by Stephen Velychenko, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 89–107. Studies in Central and Eastern Europe.
Polishchuk, Iaroslav. Frontyrna identychnist': Odesa XX stolittia. Dukh i litera, 2019.
Roitburd, Aleksandr Anatol'evich (Oleksandr Roitburd). “K proektu ‘Metafizika mifa.’” USI Odessa, 16 June 2018, https://blogs.usionline.com/authors/%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%B9%D1%82%D0%B1%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B4/487/. Accessed 2 Dec. 2021
Puleri, Marco. Ukrainian, Russophone, (Other) Russian: Hybrid Identities and Narratives in Post-Soviet Culture and Politics. Peter Lang, 2020.
Rafieienko, Volodymyr (Volodymyr Rafeyenko). “Ostannia liubov.” NV.ua, 25 Apr. 2019, https://nv.ua/ukr/opinion/ostannya-lyubov-50013684.html. Accessed 2 Dec. 2021.
Rafieienko, Volodymyr (Volodymyr Rafeyenko). Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love. Translated by Mark Andryczyk, Harvard UP and HURI, 2022. Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature 2.
Richardson, Tanya. Kaleidoscopic Odessa: History and Place in Contemporary Ukraine. Toronto UP, 2008.
Rothberg, Michael. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford UP, 2009.
Rothberg, Michael. Review of Alain Badiou. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Criticism, vol. 43, no. 4, 2001, pp. 478–84.
Rothberg, Michael. The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators. Stanford UP, 2019.
Rothberg, Michael. “Understanding Mnemonic Complexity.” The Historical Expertise, 2019, https://www.istorex.org/en/post/michael-rothberg-understanding-mnemonic-complexity. Accessed 2 Dec. 2021.
“Shveds'kyi fond nadav hrant na ekranizatsiiu romanu Ivana Kozlenka.” Chytomo, 3 Nov. 2021, https://chytomo.com/shvedskyj-fond-nadav-hrant-na-ekranizatsiiu-romanu-ivana-kozlenka/. Accessed 2 Dec. 2021.
Stanton, Rebecca Jane. Isaac Babel and the Self-Invention of Odessan Modernism. Northwestern UP, 2012.
Stepanov, Ievhenii. Rosiis'ke movlennia Odesy. Astroprynt, 2004.
Sylvester, Roshanna P. Tales of Old Odessa: Crime and Civility in the City of Thieves. Northern Illinois UP, 2005.
Tanny, Jarrod. City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia’s Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa. Indiana UP, 2011.
Tanny, Jarrod. “The Many Ends of Old Odessa: Memories of the Gilded Age in Russia’s City of Sin.” Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies: Working Paper Series, 2007, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2p3674pw. Accessed 1 Apr. 2022.
Tsymbal, Iaryna, ed. Nashi dvadtsiati, a multi-volume anthology series in progress. Tempora, 2016–present.
Uffelmann, Dirk. “Is There Such a Thing as ‘Russophone Russophobia’? When Russian Speakers Speak Out against Russia(n) in the Ukrainian Internet.” Global Russian Cultures, edited by Kevin M.F. Platt, Wisconsin UP, 2019, pp. 207–29.
Zlenko, Hryhorii. Pershi ukrains'ki vydavnytstva Odesy. Instytut ukrainoznavstva im. Kryp''iakevycha, 2000.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Ⓒ 2023 Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, and EWJUS (East-West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies). For permissions and other inquiries, please contact the Editor-in-Chief: bilenky@ualberta.ca
Author's Rights
The Author transfers and assigns to EWJUS (East-West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies) and the CIUS (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies), during the full term of copyright and any extensions or renewals of that term, all copyright in and to the Work published in EWJUS by the Author, including but not limited to the right to publish, republish, transmit, sell, distribute and otherwise use the Work in electronic and print editions of EW:JUS and in derivative works throughout the world, in all languages and in all media now known or later developed, and to license or permit others to do so.
Notwithstanding the above, EWJUS grants back to the Author the following distinct rights:
- The non-exclusive right to use, reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, and publicly display the Work in any medium in connection with the Authors’ academic and professional activities, including but not limited to teaching, conference presentations, and lectures.
- The non-exclusive right to create derivative works from the Work.
- The non-exclusive right to make full use of the Work in future research and publications, including the right to republish the Work in whole or in part in any book that one or more of the Authors may write or edit after the Work has appeared.
The Author represents and warrants that the Work is the original work of the Authors and that it does not violate or infringe the law or the rights of any third party and, specifically, that the Work contains no matter that is defamatory or that infringes any literary or proprietary rights, intellectual property rights, or any rights of privacy. The Author also warrants that he or she has the full power to make this agreement, and if the Work was prepared jointly, the Author agrees to inform the Authors of the terms of this Agreement and to obtain their written permission to sign on their behalf. The Author agrees to hold the Journal harmless from any breach of the above-mentioned representations.
Works published by EWJUS are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Under the terms of this license:
- You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
- If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.
