DIALECTICS OF INTERNAL COLONIZATION

Abstract

Abstract: The postcolonial paradigm has evolved through various conceptual advancements, from the anthropological concept of “skin” as the basis of dual oppression based on class and race to the semiotic treatment of “skin” as a social interface constructed in practices of “writing on bodies” and discourses. The decolonization in our region raises a new set of problems. On the one hand, it refers to a complex cultural palimpsest. As a basic text of modernity, we have the colonization of the countryside by the city. But on top of the division of the city and the countryside other dividing lines are superimposed: ethnolinguistic divisions (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian) and the divisions of imperial and democratic forces. On the other hand, the figure of the Russian colonizer has a specific, neurotic character — a “neurotic view” of its position in the world, the fear of being colonized. And this neurotic fear is displaced from external enemies to internal ones. The Russian Empire, confronting external forces, constantly encounters not only an imaginary enemy, but imperceptibly turns back to itself as a colonized colonizer.
Keywords: Postcolonialism, Decolonization, Discursive “skin”, Cultural Palimpsest.