IMPERIAL SRATEGIES AND DISCIURCES OF DOMINATION IN UKRAINIAN CULTURE

Abstract

The imperial strategies and discourses of domination in modern Ukrainian culture, their manifestations in the Ukrainian literature on the basis of post-colonial and cultural-anthropological methodologies are analyzed. Integration and consolidation of Ukrainian national culture is an important state-building and globalization process. The very state of postcoloniality of contemporary Ukrainian culture demands new integrated philosophical studies of Ukrainian studies, including the emancipatory, decolonial socio-therapeutic goal. The questions of imperial strategies of domination, postcolonial discourse and globalization were covered in his writings by G. Grabovich, T. Gundorov, N. Zborovsk, M. Pavlyshyn, O. Titar, E. Thomson, O. Yurchuk. It is argued that the proliferation of an anti-colonial narrative is a definite step in overcoming the colonial heritage, but much more effective in overcoming colonialism is through democratization and the simultaneous spread of different types of discourses - postcolonial, decolonial, postimperial, anti-colonial, multicultural. Modern Ukrainian culture demonstrates both anti-colonial and post-colonial discourses. Socio-political and socio-cultural events of the last time especially actualize anti-colonial discourses, which is due to awareness of Ukraine as a former colony. At the same time, post-colonial discourses also demonstrate not only global but also national Ukrainian specifics. We see that colonialism in Ukraine, and, accordingly, the imperial resentment of the former metropolis with respect to Ukrainian lands, is not only a historical phenomenon, but a condition that determines and generates new conflicts up to an armed confrontation. In general, the texts of Ukrainian contemporary literature in view of the state of postcolonialism are classified into two types: 1) the type that focuses on the deconstruction of the imperial (postmodern post-colonialism), 2) the type that restores the Ukrainian national mythology (nationally oriented post-colonialism). The traces of the imperial are analyzed in the useful sense of the national-centered construction, and in the negative, when under the postmodern mask the cultural field of the Empire-Colony relations is restored. It is concluded that national Ukrainian culture will develop effectively only if the main imperial strategies are deconstructed and the main imperial myths are debunked.