"The Ukrainianess" in the Discourses and Narratives of the Western Postmordern Literature

Abstract

Late postmodernity, “the time of sign”, is described by postmodern theorists as an epoch when discourses andnarratives have become extremely influential; moreover, it is the time when media images, “regimes of signification” and theaestheticization of everyday life have become the significant feature of modern experience, exposing some definite modes ofpostmodern communication. Literature, being closely linked to knowledge in M. Foucault’s view of history, is loaded with ideology,penetrating postmodern discourses and narratives, intertexts included. Hence the significance of the text in postmodern studies, itsrelation to human beings who are its creators and addressees. The latter is connected with R. Barth’s proclaiming “the death of theauthor” and “the birth of the reader”, which is meant to assert that readers create their own meanings, and texts therefore are unstableand open to interpretation. Since history and society can be “read” as the text, in hermeneutics the idea of culture being the commonintertext is widespread and influential. As for the importance of context, it is represented as one of the most significant issues of thepostmodern theory. Although the interpretation does not follow rules, there is nothing “irrational” in it since it is always taking place inthe definite context.All mentioned above is taken into consideration while analysing M. Levitska’s novel “A short history of tractors in Ukrainian”.The novel by M. Levitska which won the Wodehouse prise as the best piece of prosaic comical fiction in 2015, is, in fact, a “familysaga” with a certain autobiographical narrative – the author’s parents were refugees from Ukraine after the Second World War, andher father, indeed, had written the “history of tractor-building in Ukraine”. Still the most influential narrative is a kind of “viagra”- saga:the former engineer from Ukraine being 84 years old fell in love with a 30-years old blond with the gorgeous bust whom he had met atthe Ukrainian club in his small town near London. He spends his pension on Valentina’s whims, her cosmetological operationsincluded, and believes that Valentina is pregnant with his own child.Trying to “save” her father from the “femme fatale”, the narrator – Nadezhda, goes deeper and deeper into the history of herparents in Ukraine, hence the dramatic change in the narrative, the tragic overtones began to sound in the narration though it is "bydefinition" a farce. The combination of dramatic “histories”, the narrative of the “old years” among them, introduces the problem of“Self” and the “Other” in the narrative. The intertext, changing the “overtones” of the narration, does not serve the aim of harmonizingthe main themes of the novel and makes the main message of the novel vague and ambiguous; the latter blockades the humanisticnarratives of the novel, – the narrative of the “old years” included.

Keywords: postmodern, Ukrainians, Roman M. Levitsky, Western discourse Derrida, narrative.