Ambicoloniality and the Decolonization of Ukrainian Culture

• In Event: Infrastructures of Liberation II: Resistance, Reconstruction, and De-Occupation in the Ukrainian Commons

Abstract

The paper focuses on the notion of “ambicoloniality” as the author’s proposal of the particular dynamics of the two-fold centuries-long exchange of cultural influences and symbolic power characteristic of Russian colonialism in Ukraine. It examines how ambicoloniality can be addressed from a broader cultural framework that takes into account cultural proximity (and the institutional and infrastructural networks supportive of it) and the shared geographical and political borders between the two countries. The presentation brings up a proposition for describing, analyzing, and resolving the entanglement by developing a new theoretical approach. The paper draws on some of the developments proposed in the monograph Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian-Russian Case (forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).

Author

• Svitlana Biedarieva, Independent Scholar