Launch of the KIU Lunch Lectures with Mykhailo Minakov

The Competence Network for Interdisciplinary Ukrainian Studies (KIU) is organising Brown Bag Lunch lectures at the University of Viadrina on a monthly basis. KIU research fellows will present their work over lunch. Mykhailo Minakov’s lecture marks the start of the new event series. Mykhailo Minakov Brown Bag Lunch – Wednesday, 11 December 2024, 1–2 p.m. GD 102, European University Viadrina Goodbye to Homo Sovieticus: Reviving the Heroic and Creative Spirit of the 1990s In this talk, KIU research fellow Mykhailo Minakov will revisit the intellectual heritage of Ukrainian and Russian philosophy and literature in the late 1980s and the 1990s. This was a period when the Soviet Union – and all related institutions and practices – collapsed, opening up a space for human creativity in science, politics, the arts and the economy. It was a period when the world, history, and what it means to be human were re-imagined. As the search for a “New Human” started in emerging Eastern European societies, the “Soviet Man” became a thing of the past. How did philosophers and writers theorize and artistically symbolize the break with "Soviet Civilization"? What post-Soviet Humans and social worlds were projected? How is this story linked to our own time? These are the questions Mykhailo Minakov will address. Mykhailo Minakov (born on 6 October 1971) is a political philosopher based in Kyiv and Milan. His major philosophical investigations focus on human experience, social knowledge, political systems, historical consciousness, and multiple modernities. Mykhailo has been a Principal Investigator for Ukraine, and editor-in-chief of the Wilson Center blog Focus Ukraine since 1 March 2018. Everybody is invited to have their lunch during the presentation. Note: No lunch provided, please bring your own.