UKRAINE: THE AESTHETICS OF DECOLONIZATION TRANSFORMATIONS

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of cultural transformations within the process of decolonization in Ukraine. The object is political aesthetics, which is interpreted as a set of “cultural artifacts” – the results of engineering by political elites, artists, and civic activists who use art genres to overcome the consequences of the country's colonial past and define its modern cultural code. The methodology is based on the constructivist paradigm and involves the study of actor tactics and strategies in creating the cultural background of the Ukrainian political community, which combines both traditional and (post)modern subjects, styles, and genres. The study uses the procedures of urban ethnography, in particular, photo-fixation of cases of public creativity of Odesa citizens, with further interpretation as local components of the process of creating a new political aesthetics in the country. It is stated that the process of postcolonial “cultural production” in Ukraine is characterized by role deformations: before the outbreak of a large-scale war, political elites demonstrated passivity in overcoming the colonial past and stylistic “omnivorousness”. Therefore, the leadership status in the development of a new political aesthetics passed to artists and public activists, who became the main agents of cultural change. It is determined that the peculiarity of the political aesthetics of postcolonialism in Ukraine is the combination of primordial, modern, and postmodern cultural styles, plots, and narratives. The main «assembly point» of these diverse aesthetic layers is the formation of the cultural identity of the Ukrainian political nation as an integrative project based on stylistic identity and diversity. The necessity of creating a cultural image of the national community endowed with the parameters of interpretive clarity, originality, persuasiveness, and interest for internal (Ukrainian citizens) and external (international community) recipients is substantiated.