ANTI-COLONIAL TEXTUAL STRATEGIES IN THE POETRY OF TARAS SHEVCHENKO: ON THE ISSUE OF POSTCOLONIAL RECEPTION OF THE ARTIST'S WORK

Abstract

Introduction. Development of post-colonial studies in Ukraine requires exploration of ways to adapt the theory to the socio-political and cultural situation in the country, as well as to the format of post-colonial reception of the works of Ukrainian artists, including Taras Shevchenko. The implementation of these tasks is complicated by the reactivation of neo-colonial threats, which actualize, in particular, the nationalist approach to Shevchenko's artistic heritage. The purpose of the article is to study the anti-colonial textual strategies in the work (primarily in the pre-arrest period) of Taras Shevchenko, to comprehend the nature of their subversive action, to determine the interpretive potential of the artist's texts through the prism of contemporary neo-colonial challenges.

Methods. Both the methodological arsenal of post-colonial studies (close reading, elements of narrative analysis) and the national hermeneutics, elements of receptive aesthetics, as well as basic literary methods, were used.

Results. It is determined that the anti-colonial textual strategies in the poetry of Taras Shevchenko (pre-arrest period) first created a noticeable opposition to imperial politics in the depiction of Ukrainian history, language, culture, thus embodying anti-colonial resistance at a new, more productive stage of modern nation-building. Тhe main textual strategy of Shevchenko's poetry is the denial of the imperial ideological paradigm (realized in the fields of language, history, education, culture (literature)). It includes a number of more local strategies. Shevchenko consistently chose Ukrainian language for his works, contrary to the tendency of Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism in the colonial literary environment, as well as he chose an elitist linguistic code that refutes the claims of imperial critics about the non-existence or inferiority of the Ukrainian language. Anti-colonial strategies of discrediting the «exemplary» Russian literature (in the introduction to the Shevchenko’s poem «Haidamaky»), and of the debunking of the idea of «Great Russian greatness» (primarily in his poems «A Dream (Everyone has their own fate...)», «Caucasus») are aimed at revising the superiority of the empire, decentralizing its power-authoritarian vertical. The strategy of differentiation, separating the national from the imperial is realized in the conceptualization of Muscovites / Russians as the «others», the «aliens» (the poem «Kateryna», the epistle «To Osnovyanenko», and other works). This strategy opposed the imperial ideology of the «unified Russian-Ukrainian people», thus resisting the assimilative imperial policy. In the Shevchenko's «three-year period» poetry, the imperial false historiography, and the idealized romantic version of Ukrainian history as well had been radically denied. The strategy of reinterpreting Cossack history focused on the national defeat and resentment. In the poem «The Great Cavern», three bifurcation points on the historical path of the colonization of Ukraine are articulated - the Pereyaslav Agreement, the defeat of Baturyn, and the Zaporizhian Sich. In the epilogue to the poem «It Stands in the Village of Subotiv», personal responsibility for the subjugation of Ukraine was uncompromisingly placed on Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky. The pathos of national resentment in the interpretation of Ukraine's historical defeat, besides anger, insults, was expressed in the shame for the loss of national dignity by Ukrainians.

The anti-colonial nature of these textual strategies is reinforced by narrative strategies of straightforward exposure of imperial denazification policy, oscillations of the narrator between sarcastic and invective tones, the principled bilingualism in dialogues that accentuates the communicational and cultural gap between characters of the Ukrainian and Russian people.

Conclusions. In Ukrainian literature, it was through the poetry of Taras Shevchenko (created before his arrest) that the anti-colonial front was created, the national "version of reality" alternative to the imperial one was textually embodied, the discourse of national being was activated, thereby activating the process of conscious nation-building. The mechanism of dismantling imperial ideologemes, demonstrated by the textual strategies of Shevchenko's work, remains effective today in the situation of information warfare unleashed against Ukraine.

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