Daniele Monticelli participated in a panel discussion with Anthony Pym, Oleksandr Kalnychenko, Martin Djovčoš during a conference “Translation, Interpreting & Culture 2023: Virality and Isolation in the Era of Deepening Divides” held in Bratislava 20 – 22 September 2023.
The panel “Breaking out of Isolation” addressed the issues of (new) isolation, cultural rewriting, and effect of virality in current political, economic, and cultural situation.
With what can currently be seen as a period of permacrisis and ongoing paradigmatic changes on global level in numerous fundamental areas of life, few cultural trends can be predicted to last. This, however, does not mean that changes cannot be observed and should not be interpreted.
One current example of a marked change is the unprecedented international visibility obtained by the Ukrainian language, history, identity, economics, etc. as a side effect of the development of Russia’s war on Ukraine. The country, having a long history of Russian oppression and having gained significant amount of symbolic capital especially in the past year and a half, has gone viral. On the contrary, as can be observed from such indicators as numbers of students enrolling into Russian studies outside of Russia, Russian culture will most probably be engaged with more tentatively in the coming years.
Cultural hegemony and reinscription are processes that define not only Soviet and post-Soviet histories, but affect marginalised groups (geographical regions, nation-states, etc.) in general.
