Description
This paper explores how Ukrainian Railways (Ukrzaliznytsia) has become a site of ontological security production and creative resilience in the context of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Moving beyond its role as critical infrastructure, the railway system in Ukraine has emerged as a platform for everyday storytelling, artistic intervention, and collective identity reimagination. Drawing on a multi-modal narrative analysis of media productions, art installations, sonic environments, and interviews with railway workers and passengers, I trace how railways contribute to Ukrainians’ ontological security by shaping their autobiographical narratives of the resilient national Self. I identify four mechanisms that underpin this phenomenon: civilian protection narratives that depict railway workers as heroic figures; integration with Europe through performative infrastructural practices; operational continuity as a form of resistance through normality; and homecoming symbolism that reinforces emotional ties to displaced territories. Ukrainian Railways, therefore, exemplifies how technical systems can be repurposed a cultural and aesthetic vehicle of resilience, transforming wartime mobility into a creative strategy of resistance.
