Controversy and Exhaustion of Postmodernistic Project

Abstract

The main subject of the research in the present article is exhaustion of Postmodernism as a philosophical doctrine and aesthetical practice. Postmodernism failed to become a generally accepted phenomenon in the contemporary Ukrainian literature, which experiences a difficult process of getting out from the colonial dependence. It appeared in Ukraine in 1986–1991 as an answer to the outlook that was popular in the West. The author associates the end of this artistic trend with the events that took place in 2013–2014, when Ukrainian society and Ukrainian culture moved into a new phase of existence. The consequences of these events, reflected in the media, in public opinion and also in literature lead to rejection of the postmodern postulates. The author states that these postulates reveal a clear dysfunction. Postmodern play and general skepticism, as it turned out, not only may show the position of an independent intellectual person, but also be an imitation strategy that conceals a neo-imperial doctrine shown as a liberal project. Sometimes it’s too difficult to distinguish one manifestation from another.
 Thus, the author defines the boundaries of postmodernism clearly, showing the crash of its basic principles. In the course of time this phenomenon got quite different interpretation, that’s why the whole project now needs a systemic reset. From such point of view, the thesis about the death of postmodernism has its reasons especially in the East of Europe. In the Ukrainian case it looks like a real perspective due to characteristic intersection of time and place (the East of Europe) and puts the western project of postmodernism into a dead end, prompting us to search for alternative worldview and aesthetic models. However, this artistic trend can motivate a modern Ukrainian intellectual in a special way, opening new horizons of comprehending his own epoch.