The Language of war in contemporary literature (based on Artem Chekh’s The dressing-up game)

Abstract

The article is a scholarly study of a socio-cultural issue that extends beyond the boundaries of literary studies alone. It addresses the crisis of language emphasized by Ukrainian writers in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This pertains to the existential dimension of language, in which all of its existing resources lose the capacity to verbalize the trauma of the individual and of society experiencing a state of affective shock. Artem Chekh – a writer with firsthand frontline experience – attempts to analyse this phenomenon in his book of diary-like essays. By reflecting on his own feelings and wartime experience, the author demonstrates how the static crisis of language gradually transforms into a dynamic process of generating new linguistic resources for articulating the essential and necessary meanings of this war.