Liberation from Fear as a Сross-Cutting Plot of Oksana Zabuzhko’s Fiction

• In Event: Contemporary Ukrainian Literature: The Frontiers of Freedom

Abstract

Oksana Zabuzhko works through historical traumas that manifest themselves through fear in order to enable and amplify individual self-actualization, national decolonization, and political agency of Ukraine. Zabuzhko’s oeuvre constitutes a hypertext constructed around the cross-cutting plot of the characters’ fight against the totalitarian system that uses fear to psychologically paralyze the protagonists. This paper analyzes the forms of artistic representation of Zabuzhko’s plot of liberation from the totalitarian grip and highlights how fear induced by the totalitarian system was released and ultimately overcome by the post-Maidan generation.

Author

• Tetiana Grebeniuk, Zaporizhzhia State Medical and Pharmaceutical U (Ukraine)