The Reverberations of War: Ukrainian and Polish Academics Write a Collective Autoethnography of Experiencing War in Ukraine

Abstract

The article presents a form of collective autoethnography generated by members of an informal group of academics called The Autonomous Autoethnographic Collective. The leading idea we relate to is “reverberations” of multidimensional experiences of war in Ukraine that started on February 24, 2022. The aim of the text is to show the multiple perceptual views experienced by people situated in a borderline situation. Uncertainty of tomorrow, prolonged fear for one’s own life and that of his or her loved ones, and an attempt to survive in an environment exposed to a “constant fire” are aspects of both wartime feelings and—indicated by them—reflexive thinking. Adopting a dual perspective of the immersion in experience as lived and then analyzing it in the process of collectively shared knowledge is treated as method of inquiry. Life in the shadow of war leads to a variant of autoethnography that is subject to the principle of “reversed order,” and as such it manifests itself in the creation of “dispersed” composition. Based on the dialogic tradition (Bakhtin’s polyphonic voices), “reverberations” of war are expressed in an experimental mode of editing, which is intended not only to strengthen the message, but also to remain as close as possible to the source nature of the presented experiences—Discontinuities, imbalances, and disturbances of time and space are its visible signs.