Untitled

60 LITERATÛRZINÂTNE, FOLKLORISTIKA, MÂKSLA
around with the genres of autobiographic novel, confession, and public speech (or
academic presentation) and presents itself as a report on a research project, interspersed
with poetic fragments, was perceived as an insult to literary taste1 . Zabuzhko’s
novel “breaks many of elite literature’s laws…, it is overtly political…, always pressing
the boundaries of established genres” 2 . And indeed, this writing is an infringement
upon the laws of the novel as a genre3 .
That is why, while the title of the novel apparently stresses the veracity of the
facts presented (with the allusions to academic research), the text itself erodes any
autobiographic truthfulness. For example, the prefix “auto–”, which is always “the
single, imperious sight of the self express” 4 , never appears in the text; this underlines
the impossibility of establishing power relations between author and text, narrator
and narration. This is additionally confirmed by the lack of a stable narrator in the
text, which is also a violation of the narrative laws of autobiography as a manifestation
of the power of a male mind over his personality and life. In the novel, the narrative
shifts between the first, second, and third person narrators, which seem to have
different identities and to address different issues. For example, global perspectives
issues related to Ukraine and the Ukrainian nation, are always presented by the first
person narrator who is quite self–conscious and self–critical. Passages which discuss
‘Ukrainian’ issues are usually preceded by a phrase emphasizing that the text is
actually a public speech on a research project (“…the topic of my speech today, ladies
and gentlemen, as it is stated in the program, is “Field Research in Ukrainian Sex
…” 5 ) – with a bitter taste of irony to it (“Ladies and gentlemen, I feel a bit uncomfortable
touching this topic since, of course, it fits a sermon better than a serious academic
speech, and I already see that you are – one by one – leaving the room, sarcastically
curling your lips: crazy stuff, typical Slavic mysticism…” 6 ). Second and third
person narrators retell the personal stories of Oksana and her lover, Mykola, and the
story of their relationship. But however intimate the tone of the story might be, there
is always an ironic undertone, concealing rage, or humiliation, or helplessness.
From my point of view, a separation of the narrative voices in the novel is necessary
to distance the protagonist from her personal experience, thus distancing Field
Research from autobiography once again. Through the second and third person narration,
Oksana once again relives her relationship with Mykola, joining it with her
family experience. The first person narration functions differently: it opens up a fictional
space for the female perspective of the community she lived, and is living, in,
a fictional space where Oksana’s personal experience became a representation of a
communal experience.
The personal enters Field Research in Ukrainian Sex with sex, namely with
‘painful intercourse’ 7 , as referred to by the protagonist herself. Introduced in this
novel, pure sexual relations, the whole discourse on female sexuality, that was never
a literary topic in Ukrainian literature before, 8 are related with a number of issues that
are still not only sensitive, but painful: the Famine of 1932–33, the purges, family relations
within society affected by the fear of purges. On the one hand, such approach
depathosizes the history of the community. On the other hand, in Spivak’s terms, it
can be seen as an attempt of an intellectual to voice an experience that has been
silenced, a ‘non–literary’ experience of a female in Ukrainian society.