The art episteme of national self-identification in the context of postcolonial cultural trauma

Abstract

At the turn of the millennia, the narrative of the art sciences was enriched by an extensive analytical polylogue: from eschatological forecasts of the end of the crisis of theories and practices to the multicultural utopias of “global art”. A solid sector in this context is made up of trans-disciplinary studies of the problems of national self-identification and the revision of regional art epistemes in the new geocultural realities, in particular, those refracted in the field of postcolonial trauma of national consciousness discourse. This aspect is especially relevant for the countries of the post-Soviet space, because their cultural and artistic development is under the pressure of two equally traumatic paradigms: the Russification one belonging to the past, and the Westernization paradigm that declares itself to be the manifestation of democratic freedoms. However, each of them leads to amnesia in the historical and cultural memory of nations, threatening to collapse. Only a careful study of the causes and consequences of this civilizational phenomenon, as well as the study of the negative impact of the market ideology of the culture industry, will help to avoid depersonalization of national arts and cultures, while preserving the possibility of indigenous flourishing in the future. The article pinpoints the pain points identifies the sensitive issues in solving this problem by contemporary artists and critics from different countries, including Ukraine, leaving open the final effective fixation of the situation, which increases the catastrophic bifurcation by unstable development