Czarnobyl, nuklearna apokalipsa i postmodernizm
Chernobyl, the nuclear apocalypse and postmodernism

Summary/Abstract: Contemporary academic debates tend to relate the 1986 accident in the nuclear power station to a new consciousness in recent Ukrainian literary production. The corpus of “Chernobyl literature” contains apocalyptic works that address both highbrow and lowbrow readers. These Chernobyl or post-Chernobyl texts are generally viewed as statements communicating the truth, representing true reality, or leaving a testimony for future generations. Tamara Hundorova departs from this understanding of Chernobyl as a word-symbol signifying absolute catastrophe. Instead, she views the year 1986 as the moment when a new postmodern consciousness and literature were born in Ukraine. She also argues that Chernobyl has become a place of the “unspeakable” in Ukrainian culture, similar to Hiroshima or Auschwitz. According to Hundorova, we need to reinterpret Chernobyl. Its apocalyptic reception becomes her point of departure, leading to an analysis of the rhetorical codes of Chernobyl-related discourses.

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