Old-New Colonial Tendencies in Social Anthropology: Empathy in Wartime

Buyskykh, Julia

doi:0137-4079

- ris
- BibTeX
- EndNote
- Csv

Old-New Colonial Tendencies in Social Anthropology: Empathy in Wartime Buyskykh, Julia

Object structure

Old-New Colonial Tendencies in Social Anthropology: Empathy in Wartime

Buyskykh, Julia

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences

Ukraine ; war ; empathy ; emotional testimony ; insider’s perspective ; colonialism ; west-plaining

Taking autoethnographic and reflexive approaches as a background, this article reflects on the tendency of a number of Western Anglophone academic writings to impose a patronising perspective on, and indeed try to silence, commentary on Ukraine concerning the ongoing Russian invasion. This line of argumentation has become known as “westplaining”, and it seems to have taken the place of the old “orientalism”. Such interventions neglect or elide the variety of regional perspectives and their entangled histories, embodied experiences and emotional contexts that are all too germane to those of us who have been doing fieldwork in Ukraine for years now. Such a regrettable imposition of ill-equipped “westplaining” thinking results in a presentation of a distanced, patronising, sometimes partisan and too-commonly facile view of the complexity of current events. Through ostensibly disinterested and compassionate appeals to listen to the “western” perspective first, the local insiders’ voices are effectively silenced. In contrast, I discuss the importance of emotional testimonies and active empathy in social anthropology as responses to collective evil and violence, and as one possible way to overcome the borders that intellectual colonialism creates within the academic community.

Ahmed, Sara. 2014. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Anderson, Ella. 2022. “Radiant Empathy in the Dark.” In Ionbhá: The Empathy Book for Ireland, edited by Cillian Murphy, Pat Dolan, Gillian Brownie, Mark Brennan, 254–257. Cork: Mercier Press.
Applebaum, Anne. 2022. “Ukraine must win.” https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/how-democracy-can-win-ukraine/627125 (accessed 07.04.2022)
Arendt, Hannah. 1962. Origins of Totalitarianism. Cleveland and New York: Meridian Books.
Artiukh, Volodymyr. 2022a. “US-plaining is not enough. To the Western left, on your and our mistakes.” Commons/Spilne: https://commons.com.ua/en/us-plainingnot-enough-on-your-and-our-mistakes/ (accessed 15.10.2023)
Artiukh, Volodymyr. 2022b. “The Western Left doesn’t understand Putin — or the world outside the US.” https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/russia-ukraine-westernleft-doesnt-understand-putin-or-the-world-outside-the-us (accessed 02.04.2022)
Asad, Talal (ed.). 1973. Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. London: Ithaca Press and Humanities Press.
Bilous, Taras. 2022. “A letter to the Western Left from Kyiv.” https://commons.com.ua/en/letter-western-left-kyiv/ (accessed 02.04.2022)
Blagojević, Marina. 2009. Knowledge Production at the Semiperiphery: A Gender Perspective. Belgrade: Institut za kriminolośka i sociolośka istraźivanja.
Bošković, Aleksandar. 2022. “Anthropologists at War?” Anthropology Today38 (3): 3−4.
Brennan, Mark, and Pat Dolan. 2022. “Epilogue: Reflections on Learning Empathy.” In Ionbhá: The Empathy Book for Ireland, edited by Cillian Murphy, Pat Dolan, Gillian Brownie, Mark Brennan, 333–340. Cork: Mercier Press.
Buchowski, Michał. 2004. “Hierarchies of Knowledge in Central-Eastern European Anthropology.” The Anthropology of East Europe Review 22 (2): 5–14.
Buchowski, Michał. 2005. “Correspondence. Reply to Chris Hann.” The Anthropology of East Europe Review 23 (1): 198–200.
Buchowski, Michał. 2012. “Intricate relations between Western anthropologists and Easternethnologists.” Focaal – Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 63: 20–38.
Buyskykh, Julia. 2022. “War Notes (the First Month of War)”. Ukraina Moderna. https://uamoderna.com/war/war-notes-the-first-month-of-war/ (assessed 02.09.2022)
Buyskykh, Julia. 2023. “The River’s Flow.” In Inner Light. Stories by Ukrainian Writers in Ireland: https://www.innerlight.ie/post/the-canada-goose (assessed 20.06.2023)
Cherepanyn, Vasyl. 2022. “Why does the West refuse to call Putin’s Russia Fascist?” https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/western-political-financial-elites-encourage-putin-russia-fascism-by-vasyl-cherepanyn-2022-06 (accessed 15.04.2022)
Clifford, James, and George E Marcus. 1986. Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Clifford, James. 2012. “Feeling Historical.” Cultural Anthropology 27(3): 417–426.
Csordas, Thomas. 2013. “Morality as a Cultural System.” Current Anthropology 54(5): 523−546.
Csordas, Thomas. 2019. “From Theodicy to Homodicy. Evil as an Anthropological Problem.” In Engaging Evil. A Moral Anthropology, edited by William C. Olsen and Thomas J. Csordas, 35–50. New York and Oxford: Berghahn books.
Davies, James. 2010. “Introduction. Emotions in the Field.” In Emotions in the Field: The Psychology and Anthropology of Fieldwork Experience, edited by James Davies and Dimitrina Spencer, 1–14. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Dostlieva, Lia, and Andrii Dostliev. 2022. “Not all criticism is Russophobic: on decolonial approach to Russian culture.” https://blokmagazine.com/not-all-criticism-is-russophobic-on-decolonial-approach-to-russian-culture/ (accessed 25.03.2022)
Dunn, Elisabeth Cullen. 2022. “When Western Anti-Imperialism Supports Imperialism.” https://www.focaalblog.com/2022/03/03/elizabeth-cullen-dunn-when-western-anti-imperialism-supports-imperialism (accessed 25.03.2022)
Dutchak, Oksana. 2022. “10 Terrible Leftist Arguments against Ukrainian Resistance”, Spilne/Commons. https://commons.com.ua/en/10-zhahlivih-livackih-argumentiv-proti-ukrayinskogo-oporu/ (accessed: 19.02.2023)
Fedirko, Taras. 2022. An Interview. War In Ukraine https://www.theasa.org/publications/asaonline/articles/asaonline_0111 (accessed 25.03.2022)
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. 2022. “Will ostracising Russia bring about an end to the war in Ukraine? The Western media’s narrative might be morally satisfying, but it could prove counterproductive.” https://www.abc.net.au/religion/sheila-fitzpatrick-anti-russian-rhetoric-and-western-media/13805488 (accessed 25.03.2022)
Fiut, Aleksander. 2014. “In the Shadow of Empires: Post-colonialism in Central and Eastern Europe — Why Not?” Teksty Drugie, Special Issue — English Edition, no. 1: http://rcin.org.pl (accessed 04.04.2022)
Gordon, Edmund T. 1991. “Anthropology and liberation.” In Decolonizing Anthropology: Moving Further toward an Anthropology for Liberation edited by Faye V. Harrison, 150–169. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association.
Gomza, Ivan. 2022a. “How to Hide an Empire: Naming and Nature of Russo-Ukrainian War.” https://krytyka.com/en/articles/how-to-hide-an-empire-naming-andnature-of-russo-ukrainian-war (accessed 25.03.2022)
Gomza, Ivan. 2022b. “War and Terrorism.” https://krytyka.com/en/articles/war-and-terrorism (accessed 25.03.2022)
González, Roberto J. ed. 2004. Anthropologists in the Public Sphere. Speaking Out on War, Peace, and American Power. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Hall, Derek. 2022. “Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: A Response to David Harvey.” https://www.focaalblog.com/2022/02/28/derek-hall-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-a-response-to-david-harvey/#more-3696 (accessed 25.03.2022)
Hann, Chris. 2005. “Correspondence: Reply to Michał Buchowski.” The Anthropology of East Europe Review 23(1): 194–197.
Hann, Chris. 2014a. The Expansion of NATO and the Contraction of Eurasia: http://www.focaalblog.com/2014/09/26/chris-hann-the-expansion-of-nato-and-thecontraction-of-eurasia (accessed 30.03.2022)
Hann, Chris. 2014b. “Beyond Cold War, Beyond Otherness: Some Implications of Socialism and Postsocialism for Anthropology.” In Does East Go West? Anthropological Pathways through Postsocialism, edited by Christian Giordano, François Ruegg and Andrea Boscoboinik, 35–56. Berlin: LIT Verlag.
Hann, Chris. 2022. The Agony of Ukraine. https://www.focaalblog.com/2022/03/11/chris-hann-the-agony-of-ukraine (accessed 23.03.2022)
Harrison, Faye V. 1991. “Anthropology as an Agent of Transformation: Introductory Comments and Queries.” In Decolonizing Anthropology: Moving Further toward an Anthropology for Liberation, edited by Faye V. Harrison, 1–11. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association.
Harvey, David. 2022. “Remarks on Recent Events in the Ukraine. An Interim Statement.” https://www.focaalblog.com/2022/02/25/david-harvey-remarks-on-recent-events-in-the-ukraine-an-interim-statement/ (accessed 23.03.2022)
Hastrup, Kirtsen. 1995. A passage to anthropology. Between experience and theory. London: Routledge.
Hybrid Warfare Analytical Group. 2021. “‘Russkiy Mir’ as the Kremlin’s Quasi-ideology.” https://uacrisis.org/en/russkiy-mir-as-the-kremlin-s-quasi-ideology (assessed 20.08.2022)
Hrytsak, Yaroslav. 2022. “Ukraina stane novym tsentralnoyevropejskym tyhrom.” https://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2022/05/1/7343225/ (accessed 13.05.2022)
Ingold, Tim. 1992. “Editorial.” Man 27 (4): 693–696.
Jordan, Glenn H. 1991. “On Ethnography in an Intertextual Situation: Reading Narratives or Deconstructing Discourse?” In Decolonizing Anthropology: Moving Further toward an Anthropology for Liberation, edited by Faye V. Harrison, 42−67. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association.
Kalb, Don. 2022a. “‘Fuck Off’ versus ‘Humiliation’: The Perverse Logic towards War in Europe’s East.” https://www.focaalblog.com/2022/03/01/don-kalb-fuck-offversus-humiliation-the-perverse-logic-towards-war-in-europes-east/ (accessed 23.03.2022)
Kalb, Don. 2022b. “War: New Times.” https://www.focaalblog.com/2022/04/21/donkalb-war-new-times/ (accessed 23.03.2022)
Kasianov, Georgiy. 2022. “From Historical Fallacy to Tragic, Criminal Loss: Putin’s Case for Invading Ukraine.” https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/kennan-cable-no-76-historical-fallacy-tragic-criminal-loss-putins-case-invading-ukraine (accessed 15.04.2022)
Kazharski, Aliaksei. 2022. “Explaining the ‘Westsplainers’: Can a Western Scholar be an Authority on Central and Eastern Europe?” https://ukrainian-studies.ca/2022/07/19/explaining-the-westsplainers-can-a-western-scholar-be-an-authority-on-central-and-eastern-europe/ (accessed 20.07.2022)
Khromeychuk, Olesya. 2022. “Where is Ukraine on the mental map of the academic community?” BASEES 2022 Opening Keynote Lecture, 8 April 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJthJb1tK0Y (accessed 15.05.2022)
Klumbytė, Neringa. 2022. “‘There is nothing there’: Geopolitics and Temporality of Sovereignty.” ASEEES NewsNet, V. 62, n. 3: 6: https://issuu.com/aseees/docs/may_2022_final?fr=sMzA2ODQ3NzgwOTA (accessed 19.09.2022)
Kovalenko, Volodymyr. 2009. “The Rape of Baturyn: The Archaeological Evidence.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 31 (1/4): 37–78.
Krieg in der Ukraine. 2022. “Waffenstillstand jetzt!” https://www.zeit.de/2022/27/ukraine-krieg-frieden-waffenstillstand (accessed 25.05.2022)
Kulchytskyi, Stanislav. 2022. “Istoriya yak zbroya. Chomu ya zalyshajusia v Kyjevi?” https://www.dsnews.ua/ukr/blog/stanislav-kulchickiy-istoriya-yak-zbroya-chomu -ya-zalishayus-v-kiyevi-14042022-457372 (accessed 30.03.2022)
Kulyk, Volodymyr. 2018. “Shedding Russianness, recasting Ukrainianness: the post-Euromaidan dynamics of ethnonational identifications in Ukraine.” Post-Soviet Affairs 34 (2-3): 119–138.
Kulyk, Volodymyr. 2022. “Dyskusii iz zakhidnymy kolehamy pro nauku pid hurkit vijny.” https://krytyka.com/ua/articles/dyskusiii-iz-zakhidnymy-kolehamy-pro-nauku-pid-hurkit-viiny (accessed 25.04.2022)
Maček, Ivana. 2009. Sarajevo Under Siege: Anthropology in Wartime. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Mauss, Marcel. [1935] 1973. “Techniques of the body.” Economy and Society, 2 (1): 70–88.
Mellen, Ruby. 2019. “It’s Ukraine, not “the” Ukraine. And Ukrainians want you to get it right.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/10/01/its-ukraine-notukraine-ukrainians-want-you-get-it-right/ (20.08.2022)
Michnik, Adam. 2022. “‘We are all Ukrainians now’.” Gazeta Wyborcza, 24.02.2022: https://wyborcza.pl/7,173236,28150727,we-are-all-ukrainians-now-adammichnik.html?disableRedirects=true (15.03.2022)
Mishkova, Diana. 2018. Beyond Balkanism: The Scholarly Politics of Region Making. London and New York: Routledge.
Mykhailovskyi, Vitalii. 2022. “Kazus Sheila Fitzpatrick. De zakinchuyetsia sovietolohia i pochynayetsia rosijska propahanda.” https://tyzhden.ua/History/254843?fbclid=IwAR0Zx0aFFVHLNcjDHgBxEx0bWzZxXOhrptC6XQbzkmsaj0o0ByhkEVoDz1k (accessed 30.03.2022)
Okely, Judith. 1992. “Anthropology and autobiography. Participatory experience and embodied knowledge.” In Anthropology and autobiography, edited by Judith Okely and Helen Callaway, 1–28. London: Routledge.
Okely, Judith. 2007. “Fieldwork embodied.” In Embodying sociology. Retrospect, progress and prospects, edited by Chris Shilling, 65–79. Oxford: Blackwell.
Okely, Judith. 2019. “Fieldwork Emotions: Embedded Across Cultures, Shared, Repressed, or Subconscious.” In Affective Dimensions of Fieldwork and Ethnography, edited by Thomas Stodulka, Samia Dinkelaker and Ferdiansyah Thajib, 325–345. Cham: Springer Verlag.
Pasieka, Agnieszka. 2014. “Local Scholars, Global Experts: from a Native’s Point of View.” Cargo 12 (1-2): 51–62.
Portnov, Andrii. 2022. “Nothing New in the East? What the West Overlooked — Or Ignored.” https://trafo.hypotheses.org/39812 (accessed 18.08.2022)
Prince, Todd. 2023. “Moscow’s Invasion of Ukraine Triggers ‘Soul-Searching’ At Western Universities As Scholars Rethink Russian Studies.” https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-war-ukraine-western-academia/32201630.html (accessed 05.01.2023)
Radynskyi, Oleksiy. 2022. “The Case Against the Russian Federation.” https://www.e-flux.com/journal/125/453868/the-case-against-the-russian-federation (accessed 25.04.2022)
Robbins, Joel. 2013. “Beyond the suffering subject: toward an anthropology of the good.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19 (3): 447–462.
Riabchuk, Mykola. 2016. “Ukrainians as Russia’s negative ‘other’: History comes full circle.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 49 (1): 75–85.
Ries, Nancy, Catherine Wanner and Elizabeth Cullen Dunn. 2022. “Russia’s War on Ukraine.” https://culanth.org/fieldsights/series/russias-war-on-ukraine (accessed 15.03.2022)
Ries, Nancy and Catherine Wanner. 2022. “Russia’s War in Ukraine, Continued.” https://culanth.org/fieldsights/series/russias-war-in-ukraine-continued (accessed 15.03.2022)
Smoleński, Jan, and Jan Dutkiewicz. 2022. “Zachód chce nam objaśniać świat. Czego nie wie o Europie Wschodniej?” Krytyka Polityczna: https://krytykapolityczna.pl/swiat/westsplaining-zachod-objasnia-europe-wschodnia/ (accessed 31.03.2022)
Snyder, Timothy. 2022a. “The War in Ukraine is a Colonial War.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-war-in-ukraine-is-a-colonial-war?fbclid=IwAR1krfk92saBdmKK381JgL_bBF9lwzMVLwfDiXELOpKAMWISbSyymFnD7Q4 (accessed 20.04.2022)
Snyder, Timothy 2022b. “Putin has long fantasized about a world without Ukrainians. Now we see what that means.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/23/putin-genocide-language-ukraine-wipe-out-state-identity/?fbclid=IwAR2_667pU2-OHpB3y5cXl4y1N6Hd5OCHiI83pOF6s_qi92wr8iuGQEl9Ooc (accessed 20.04.2022)
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, Nancy Condee, Harsha Ram, and Vitaly Chernetsky. 2006. “Are We Postcolonial? Post-Soviet Space.” PMLA 121 (3): 828–36. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25486358 (accessed 15.06.2023)
Todorova, Maria. 2009. Imagining the Balkans. New York: Oxford University Press.
Throop C. Jason, and Dan Zahavi. “Dark and Bright Empathy: Phenomenological and Anthropological Reflections.” Current Anthropology 61 (3): 283-303.
Thunberg, Greta. 2019. “‘You did not act in time’: Greta Thunberg’s full speech to MPs” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/23/greta-thunberg-full-speechto-mps-you-did-not-act-in-time (accessed 21.08.2023)
Tsui, Karina. 2022. “At least 900,000 Ukrainians ‘forcibly deported’ to Russia, U.S. says.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/ukraine-russia-forceddeportation-antony-blinken/ (accessed 28.06.2022)
Tsymbalyuk, Darya. 2022. “Academia must recentre embodied and uncomfortable knowledge.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01369-9?fblid=IwAR1MjuVbjskvVwBEixvqsO6_Qb96ix_CBqDSpFbA3oHhmSP3GPvwymEyYwM (accessed 23.04.2022)
Troost, Artur 2022. “Ostolski Adam: Rosję Putina wyhodowało szacowne centrum zachodnioeuropejskiej polityki, Krytyka Polityczna.” https://krytykapolityczna.pl/swiat/ostolski-rosje-putina-wyhodowalo-szacowne-centrum-zachodnioeuropejskiej-polityki (accessed 25.04.2022)
“‘Ukraine’s cause is our cause too!’ Another Open Letter to Chancellor Olaf Scholz.” 4 May 2022: https://libmod.de/en/another-open-letter-to-chancellor-olafscholz-press-release (accessed 10.06.2022)
van den Berg, Stephanie, and Anthony Deutsch. 2023. “Explainer: How are war crimes in Ukraine being investigated?” https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/howare-war-crimes-ukraine-being-investigated-2023-02-23/ (20.06.2023)
Walt, Stephen M. 2022. “The Ukraine War Doesn’t Change Everything.” https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/13/ukraine-war-realism-great-powers-unipolarity/ (assessed 16.06.2022)
Wanner, Catherine. 2014. “‘Fraternal’ nations and challenges to sovereignty in Ukraine: The politics of linguistic and religious ties.” American Ethnologist 41 (3): 427–439.
Wanner, Catherine. 2022. “We are all Ukrainians now.” 26 February 2022: https://historianspeaks. org/f/we-are-all-ukrainians-now---catherine-wanner-phd (accessed 15.03.2022)
Wolf, Larry. 1994. Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press.