Events

On 6th of May at 18:00 in the frames of the project „Dilemma Academy“ the public lecture “Dilemmas of Dissidence: Revisiting Václav Havel’s Greengrocer in Postmodern Times” by Marci Shore, Proffesor of Toronto University will be held in the Ilia State University.

In 1978, Vaclav Havel wrote of the ordinary greengrocer in communist Czechoslovakia, who every morning displayed the obligatory sign in the shop window saying “Workers of the World Unite!” Havel accused the greengrocer of living in a lie: pretending to the outside world that he believed in communism, and pretending to himself that he was powerless to do otherwise. It belongs to the demonic nature of authoritarian regimes that they can take away the space for remaining innocent, creating an abusive society in which everyone is implicated. Normalizing that which should never be made normal becomes a source of both resilience and complicity. In these conditions, what does dissent mean and what does it demand? And what does the distinction between living in a lie and living in truth mean in times of post-truth?

Marci Shore began a position as Chair in European Intellectual History at the Munk School at the University of Toronto in 2025. She was previously professor of history at Yale University; she is also a regular visiting fellow at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. In spring 2025 she guest curated, together with Oksana Forostyna, the Kyiv Book Arsenal with the theme “Everything is Translation.” She is the translator of Michał Głowiński's The Black Seasons and the author of Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968, The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe. A new edition of her book, The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution, was published in 2024. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for her forthcoming book about phenomenology in East-Central Europe In Pursuit of a Certain Truth: The Lives and Loves of a Central European Idea.

The project Dilemma Academy is implemented by the Borderland Foundation and supported by Creative Europe program. Co-organizers of the project are Pen Armenia and Institute for Central European Strategy. The public lectures in the frames of the project are organized in cooperation with Ilia State University.

Time: May 6, 6:00 PM

Location: B 201 Hall, Ilia State University, 32 I. Chavchavadze Avenue

Attendance is free.