The „Boarding” space as a metametaphor of dislike, mental peripherality and postcolonial uncertainty in modern ukrainian literature

Abstract

The concept of “boarding school” in modern Ukrainian prose is examined as a metametaphorical space and a multi-level topos, representing a complex semantic structure intertwined with the fields of totalitarian/post-totalitarian trauma, as well as personal, familial, and societal memory. The research materials comprise the novels of Tanya Malyarchuk: Oblivion; Victoria Amelina: November Syndrome; and Serhiy Zhadan: Boarding. The notion of “boarding” in contemporary Ukrainian literature significantly broadens and enriches the homeless ness topos, infusing it with new postcolonial/decolonial connotations. All three authors view the boarding school space as a classical model of internal colonization, rooted in strategies of degradation, humiliation, curtailment of human freedom, negation of human dignity, and erasure of individual traits. Consequently, these artists develop their own pathways to liberation from this colonial environment – escape, false emancipation leading to a plunge into renewed dependency, the protagonist’s reunion with their family prompted by an extreme circumstance, and the attainment of a genuine sense of Home. In this manner, Ukrainian postcolonial literary narratives encapsulate and facilitate the maturation of the Ukrainian political nation, intertwined with generational memory work and the transcendence of transgenerational traumas.