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Isabelle’s monologue, watching the war (with) the salamanders

stmm. 2026 (1): 217–220

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/sociology2026.01.217

Full text: https://stmm.in.ua/archive/ukr/2026-1/18.pdf

ALINA KALASHNIKOVA, Сandidate of Sciences in Sociology (PhD), Associate Professor at the Department of Applied Sociology and Social Communications, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (6, Svobody Sq., Kharkiv, 61022)

kalashnikova@karazin.ua

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3179-9030

This essay presents a distinctive vision of the contemporary world, according to which the idea of water flow is conceptually homologous to observable social processes. Using allusions to popular culture, literature, and internet phenomena, the author consistently develops the water metaphor, revealing the unity of social processes of different scales—personal, group, and societal—through the analysis of individual experiences. Such subjectivity of perspective allows highlighting objecthood, the subjugation of individual existence to historical events, and demonstrating the comprehensiveness of war as the strongest factor in the metamorphosis of contemporary Ukraine, which provides the basis for the author's definition of war. The concept of metamorphosis is also subject to critical consideration in a series of related concepts, such as transformation, revolution, and change. The shifts in the perception of time, space and boundaries associated with the Russian-Ukrainian war are set within the global landscape of similar processes in social communication related to digitalisation and the impact of the digital media environment on the everyday life of any modern person.

At the same time, the idea of the war experiences universality in different eras is accompanied by the thesis about the uniqueness of the social whole today's transformations, the cause of which is proclaimed to be the rejection of structure by the modernity fundamental non-structurality and by the worldview it generates. This deepens the consequences of war, leading to a breakdown of the sociality foundations – exchange, norms, boundaries between the social and the antisocial, and so on. The essay concludes with a quote from Karel Čapek's classic novel War with the Newts, in which, as we know, humanity gradually loses to another, better-adapted species of living beings and faces the prospect of losing all its civilisational achievements, its place as the dominant species, and the familiar face of the planet itself.

Keywords: fluidity, war, antistructure

Referenes:

  1. Genesis. (2015). The Bible / Tr. by I. Ohiienko. [In Ukrainian]. Kyiv: Ukrainian Biblical Fellowship.

  2. Čapek, K. (2023 [1936]). The War with the Newts. [In Ukrainian]. In: The War with the Newts. Mother / Tr. by Ju. Lesniak. Kharkiv: Folio.

Received 15.12.2025

Accepted for publication after review 07.01.2026

Isabelle’s monologue, watching the war (with) the salamanders

stmm. 2026 (1): 217–220

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/sociology2026.01.217

Full text: https://stmm.in.ua/archive/ukr/2026-1/18.pdf

ALINA KALASHNIKOVA, Сandidate of Sciences in Sociology (PhD), Associate Professor at the Department of Applied Sociology and Social Communications, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (6, Svobody Sq., Kharkiv, 61022)

kalashnikova@karazin.ua

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3179-9030

This essay presents a distinctive vision of the contemporary world, according to which the idea of water flow is conceptually homologous to observable social processes. Using allusions to popular culture, literature, and internet phenomena, the author consistently develops the water metaphor, revealing the unity of social processes of different scales—personal, group, and societal—through the analysis of individual experiences. Such subjectivity of perspective allows highlighting objecthood, the subjugation of individual existence to historical events, and demonstrating the comprehensiveness of war as the strongest factor in the metamorphosis of contemporary Ukraine, which provides the basis for the author's definition of war. The concept of metamorphosis is also subject to critical consideration in a series of related concepts, such as transformation, revolution, and change. The shifts in the perception of time, space and boundaries associated with the Russian-Ukrainian war are set within the global landscape of similar processes in social communication related to digitalisation and the impact of the digital media environment on the everyday life of any modern person.

At the same time, the idea of the war experiences universality in different eras is accompanied by the thesis about the uniqueness of the social whole today's transformations, the cause of which is proclaimed to be the rejection of structure by the modernity fundamental non-structurality and by the worldview it generates. This deepens the consequences of war, leading to a breakdown of the sociality foundations – exchange, norms, boundaries between the social and the antisocial, and so on. The essay concludes with a quote from Karel Čapek's classic novel War with the Newts, in which, as we know, humanity gradually loses to another, better-adapted species of living beings and faces the prospect of losing all its civilisational achievements, its place as the dominant species, and the familiar face of the planet itself.

Keywords: fluidity, war, antistructure

Referenes:

  1. Genesis. (2015). The Bible / Tr. by I. Ohiienko. [In Ukrainian]. Kyiv: Ukrainian Biblical Fellowship.

  2. Čapek, K. (2023 [1936]). The War with the Newts. [In Ukrainian]. In: The War with the Newts. Mother / Tr. by Ju. Lesniak. Kharkiv: Folio.

Received 15.12.2025

Accepted for publication after review 07.01.2026

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