Breaking and Keeping the Aesthetic Taboos of Sharovarshchyna in the Ukrainian Diaspora

• In Event: Historical and Contemporary Practices of Taboo Making and Taboo Breaking in Ukrainian and Mongolian Folklore

Abstract

Sharovarshchyna, a “colonial kitsch” (Hundorova, 2009), is aesthetics that is viewed as a strategic tool of imperial, and then Soviet Russia to present Ukrainians as exotic, backwards, colonized “other”. As a result of this allegedly successful campaign, Ukrainians, supposedly, uncritically adopted sharovarshchyna and often continue to present themselves in this way. In my paper, I offer a different view on sharovarshchyna, that through the lens of the Ukrainian diaspora music and dance ensembles in North America, who made preservation of Ukrainian culture to be their life-long mission, while it was either heavily censored or banned in the Soviet-occupied Ukraine. Ironically, they adopted the same sharovarshchyna aesthetics in their staged performance.

Author

• Iryna Voloshyna, Indiana U Bloomington