{"id":14337,"date":"2025-12-01T22:14:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T03:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=14337"},"modified":"2025-12-01T22:24:58","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T03:24:58","slug":"choice-points-antagonisms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2025\/12\/01\/choice-points-antagonisms\/","title":{"rendered":"Choice points & antagonisms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There\u2019s a scene about 35 minutes into \u201c2000 Meters to Andriivka<\/a>,\u201d the harrowing Ukrainian war documentary that aired on Frontline last week, where a soldier and the embedded cameraman-director are complimenting each other on their Ukrainian speech. One is from the near-border city of Kharkiv, the other from just outside it, and both mention how they have \u201ctransitioned\u201d to speaking Ukrainian from Russian. (\u201c\u042f \u043f\u0435\u0440\u0435\u0445\u043e\u0434\u0438\u0432, \u043d\u0430\u0432\u0447\u0438\u0432\u0441\u044f\u2026\u201d \u201c\u041c\u0438 \u0442\u0435\u0436 \u043f\u0435\u0440\u0435\u0445\u043e\u0434\u0438\u043b\u0438 \u0432\u0441\u0456\u2026\u201d\/\u201cI transitioned, learned it\u2026\u201d \u201cWe all transitioned as well\u2026\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The verb \u201ctransitioned\u201d resonates in an interesting way for western viewers, who may be accustomed to hearing it in the context of trans identity discourses, in which people typically \u201cfind themselves\u201d when they establish their chosen gender identity after years of a confusing dysphoria. In Ukraine, as it would be in many parts of the world, the \u201cfinding oneself\u201d might happen in circumstances of war, when a choice has to be made between taking the side of good over that of evil (however these are perceived), or — as in this case — between speaking a (perceived) colonizer\u2019s language and speaking one\u2019s mother tongue. It also happens, more commonly perhaps, in religious contexts, when confronted with an option that comes to make sense for a newly self-proclaimed believer or \u201cconvert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The parallels are instructive, because they raise the question: what kind of transitions or conversions are allowed and encouraged, and which ones discouraged or foreclosed in a society? What are the circumstances that shape these options, and what is it that is called out from \u201cwithin\u201d an individual that compels that person in one direction or another? The issue appears to hinge on a choice, as if they are an individual option, but really they have to do with choice points<\/em>, forks in roads, that are placed before people by their circumstances. In sociological terms, the individual’s sense of agency is always a matter of the larger social structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In the world ahead, we will all be faced with choice points, to be faced individually or collectively. We can all (metaphorically) keep speaking the colonizer\u2019s language, the language of global capitalism, infinite growth, and endless consumerist enjoyment. Or we can opt for learning the language of our place, a place to shelter and maintain for the multispecies relations that make it habitable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The form the latter takes will be the hinge around which we\u2019ll be able to distinguish political \u201cleft\u201d from political \u201cright.\u201d Will it be a language of exclusivity, where one\u2019s own — language, culture, identity (always rooted in an imagined past) — is the only thing that counts, and keeping the other out <\/em>becomes the primary strategy? (That’s where so many leaders of populist right are taking us.) Or will it be a language of eco-social solidarity, a commitment to one\u2019s own place that is understood to be open and yet-to-be-established, and that is paralleled across regions, nations, territories, the many home-places that make up the Earth?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s where the emerging \u201cecological class antagonism\u201d — that Bruno Latour and Nikolaj Schultz<\/a>, Matthew Huber<\/a>, Razmig Keucheyan<\/a>, Andreas Malm, and others<\/a> variously write about (and the differences, which I wrote about here<\/a>, are significant) — will come. It’s also something I describe in my introduction to Terra Invicta<\/em><\/a>, and its relevance to Ukraine is as acute as it is anywhere else. (I hint a bit at that in my reflections on today’s “manifesto<\/a>” posted by Ukrainian intellectuals on the 34th anniversary of the 92%-in-favor referendum that confirmed Ukrainian independence.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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