Letters for Ukraine. Textual and institutional forms of global responsibility

Abstract

AbstractThis essay analyses the epistolary correspondence between six Ukrainian and German‐speaking authors published by WeiterSchreiben, a literary platform that belongs to the non‐profit organisation WIR MACHEN DAS and which seeks to promote the work of exiled writers from regions affected by war and other humanitarian crises in the German cultural field. The essay argues that the collaborative, self‐reflexive, and short form of the letters is particularly suitable to promote global responsibility and to quickly adapt to situations of political immediacy, thus accelerating literature's reaction capacity to ongoing conflicts such as the Russia‐Ukraine war. While tracing the connections between the genre and the human rights discourse and looking at the politics of address that create a bond of communion between the correspondents and have the potential to foster various kinds of political identification among readers, the essay also explores this literary initiative from a sociological perspective, challenging strict distinctions between textual and contextual dynamics. By drawing attention to the literary and political dimension of non‐profit organisations such as WIR MACHEN DAS, the essay demonstrates that literature constitutes an important tool in civil society, which helps create forms of transnational solidarity and shape collective debates around migration and social injustice that transcend the borders of states.