Ciało, choroba i kicz: melancholijne sublimacje we współczesnej ukraińskiej prozie młodzieżowej

Abstract

Body, sickness and kitsch: melancholic sublimation in contemporary Ukrainian young prose

This paper focuses on the symptom of a “sick body” that symbolizes the phenomenon of dissociation and dis-communication in the prose of contemporary Ukrainian young writers. Homelessness, rupture of generations, autism, and loser’s self-consciousness become the existential modes of being in the works of young writers O. Ushkalov, I. Karpa, M. Brynykh, and T. Maliarchuk. The paper analyses an extravagant character of self-representation of their heroes and shows how a particular morphology of body, such as annihilated body, monstrous body, fetish-body, is brought about. Another aspect of this paper concerns the melancholic sublimation that takes form of kitsch images of pop-culture and serves as a means to overcome a syndrome of total homelessness in the post-postmodern time.