Eros and Ethnos: The Discourse of Sexuality in the Ukrainian Identity Narratives of Ivan Franko

ABSTRACT The present paper aims to analyze the representation of sexuality in the prose of the Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko (1856–1916). Selected works of this author are presented in the context of Polish-Ukrainian relations in Galicia, then a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and against the background of contemporary modernization-oriented ideologies, such as socialism and nationalism. The main objective of the paper is to present Franko’s work with regard to how knowledge/power in relation to sexuality was obtained both generally in Europe and also locally, in Galicia. Those contexts functioned in a network of relationships between the discourse concerning sexuality and the emergence of a modern Ukrainian political entity. Hence, the paper’s theoretical rests on the assumptions of Michel Foucault (1978) regarding the role played by the subjugation of sexuality in the process of constructing the subject. In addition, the text seeks to examine the genealogy of the representation of the body, sex and gender to be encountered in contemporary Ukrainian culture.