The Colonial Masquerade: Cross-Dressing as a Form of Subversion

• In Event: Travesty, Transgression, and Mimicry in Ukrainian Literature

Abstract

The idea of the Little Russian literature remains one of the most problematic in contemporary Ukrainian studies. Postcolonial studies, in particular the concept of the third space as a place where ambivalent meanings encounter and interact, provide new opportunities for analyzing Little Russian literature as colonial discourse. In the Ukrainian literature of the first half of the 19th century, this place is marked by the situation of cross-dressing. I will analyze their performative and transgressive functions in terms of decolonization.

Author

• Tamara Hundorova, National Academy of Sciences (Ukraine)