POSTCOLONIAL OPTICS OF CONTEMPORARY UKRAINIAN FANTASY PROSE (BASED ON THE NOVELS BY PAVLO DEREVIANKO AND SVITLANA TARATORINA)

Abstract

Fantasy as a genre in contemporary literature appears as a universal form, since it makes it possible to comprehend complex issues through the prism of genre fiction. The texts of the Ukrainian writers Pavlo Derevianko and Svitlana Taratorina open up a perspective for rereading the experience of confronting empire within the space of the fantasy novel.
Pavlo Derevianko’s novels (the trilogy “The Chronicle of the Grey Order”) construct an alternative history of 19th-century Ukraine and thus seek to unsettle the metropolitan vision of the Ukrainian past, affirming the independent existence of the Ukrainian state as a self-sufficient institution defended by mystical warriors – kharakternyks. The writer attempts to draw a cultural “graphic boundary”, distancing Ukraine from the empire through the use of the Latin alphabet, which emphasizes the civilizational divide between Ukraine and the metropolis.
In fantasy works, the construction of the image of the Other acquires particular significance, as it demonstrates the difference between the representatives of the forces of good and evil, both at the level of worldview and, often, on the physical level as well. In Svitlana Taratorina’s novel “Lazarus”, the role of the Other is taken by “non-humans,” characters originating in Ukrainian demonology, who find themselves under the pressure of the colonial power of “humans”. The author challenges imperial strategies of othering that marginalize the Other, turning it into a classic subaltern. The “unclean spirits” are subjected to imperial pressure, but their strength is nourished by the “memory of the land,” which remains beyond the control of the metropolitan world. At the same time, the confrontation between the metropolitan and autochthonous worlds provokes the emergence of hybrid identities with a “double optics” of world perception.
The representation of space in the fantasy prose of Ukrainian authors demonstrates a break with the imperial vision of the world. In Pavlo Derevianko’s trilogy, a horizontal model is presented, in which the metropolis is completely displaced from the Ukrainian mental map. In Svitlana Taratorina’s work, a vertical spatial matrix emerges, in which the autochthonous “memory of the land” becomes visible through the external imperial façade that appropriates Kyiv’s topography.