The Production of Fireflies

This chapter is a conversation with Bohdan Shumylovych conducted by Magdalena Zolkos, in which Shumylovych reflects on the creative and historiographic output of the ‘Two Months of War’ project (Diaries of War and Life) by embracing the conceptual rubrics of ego-documentation and self-narration. Drawing on Michael Pickering's assertion that ‘experience’ is a central category of cultural analysis, Shumylovych elaborates on the critical historiographic importance of war diaries (and dream records, etc.), discussing the multifarious ways in which they stitch together social perspectives with the inner life of the subject. The critical and feminist dimension of such narratives lies in the fact that they put out an array of traditional historiographic assumptions by insisting on the relevance of the everyday, and of intimacy, desire, and emotions, in depictions of war. As such, the documentation of the lived experience of the war is also a contribution to how the war is being inscribed in collective memory in Ukraine (and beyond). Finally, Shumylovych argues that beyond the psycho-social and historiographic records, these narratives and images of war are also political interventions, and he draws on Pasolini's and Didi-Huberman's figurations of ‘firefly’ to elucidate that dimension. Situated against the backdrop of ‘dark times’, the narrative and visual practices of recording one's experience of war, is a form of resistance against war's violence.