Rethinking War in the 21st Century: The Case of Ukraine

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Image courtesy of CCCB.

In this conversation, Ukrainian writer and essayist Oksana Zabujko questions the myths about peace and war that have shaped contemporary Europe. She subjects them to the test of reality based on the direct experience of the war in Ukraine, exposing the blind spots in European culture that have enabled us to overlook the return of large-scale violence. 

In 2014, when Russia began its war against Ukraine, annexing Crimea and invading Donbas, the most internationally acclaimed essay was Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari. The book boldly argued that, in the 21st century, humans were more likely to die of boredom than in a war. This was both popular and academic consensus at the time. 

What essential error in the way we conceive war made us so pathetically blind to the slow maturation of conflict over three decades? In her talk, Zabujko will analyze some of the main stereotypes of war and peace to have dominated our culture, in the light of the war in Ukraine, “the biggest and fiercest European war since World War II.” For Zabujko, the cognitive “glasses” through which we read the war have been largely deformed by, among other things, the collective and generational traumas of the last century. 

Zabujko is the author of over 20 books of various genres, including poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Her work has been translated into 25 languages. Her most recent, The Longest Journey (2022), an extensive essay on the cultural and historical background of Russia’s war against Ukraine, was Book of the Year in Ukraine and has since been translated into 10 languages. 

Event will be held in Catalan and Ukranian. 

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