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    A Word of Welcome from the Editor-in-Chief
    (2014) Morenets, Volodymyr
    Introductory article of Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal 2014. No. 1. by the editor in chief.
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    Postcolonial Modernities
    (2014) Ashcroft, Bill
    A major feature of post-colonial theory has been its ability to analyse historical developments of culture: expressions of anti-colonial nationalism; the paradoxical dissolution of the idea of nation along with the continuous persistence of national concerns; the question of language and appropriation; of the transformation of literary genres; the question of ethnicity and its relation to the state. But the broader question for this century concerns the way in which postcolonial theory is positioned to approach the continuing issues of global power, global interaction and cultural difference in the coming century. One answer to this has been a growing, and now well-established, interest in cultural and ethnic mobility, of diaspora, of transnational and cosmopolitan interactions. This article goes beyond this to analyse modernity using the tools of postcolonial theory to argue for the multiplicity of modernities. Modernities proceed in various ways, but the process of transformation demonstrated by the literary model can be adapted to examine the proliferation of alternative and multiple modernities. Special attention shall be given to India and China as alternative modernities to help to re-think the nature of modernity itself.
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    Rethinking Psychiatric Terror against Nationalists in Ukraine: Spatial Dimensions of Post-Stalinist State Violence
    (2014) Bertelsen, Olga
    This study focuses on psychiatric terror in the Soviet Union in the 1960s–1980s applied to nationalists who constituted approximately one-tenth of those who fell victim to political psychiatry. More specifically, through the spatial examination of two Ukrainian psychiatric clinics’ practices and the individual history of the Ukrainian dissident Victor Borovsky, this study analyses the effectiveness of silence that surrounded the cases of “psychiatric patients” in the context of increasing discontent in the republic and the national liberation movement. The medicalization of social control, psychiatric abuses, state violence and brutality exacerbated non-violent popular resistance in Ukraine, which culminated in political activism of Ukrainian patriots in the late 1980s, contributing greatly to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of independent Ukraine. Despite these ultimate outcomes, forced silence through psychiatric terror was an effective tool in the Soviet arsenal of suppression.
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    The Theoretical Background of Understanding Urban Identity in the Anthropological Perspective
    (2014) Karpovets, Maksym
    In the article, the theoretical background of the interpretation of urban identity is given using examples from anthropological studies. Urban identity is interpreted in terms of corporeality, memory and history of the city, and community. It is interpreted as a conflict of own and alien, anonymous and public, unique and secondary parts inside the cultural space of identity. The anthropology of the city offers a range of perspectives in the interpretation of identity, particularly in the context of corporeality. Another important thing is the cultural connection with history and memory. The defining feature of identity is the way of creating its own (hi)story of the city. Urban identity also appears to be the preservation of the symbolic capital of the city, including certain values, customs, rules, legends etc. Moreover, it gives rise to a permanent exploration of sustained ways of its transmission to the next generations. The findings of different anthropological studies illustrate the complex character of the phenomenon and introduce possible theoretical frames for further understanding.
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    Forgeries and Their Social Circulation in the Context of Historical Culture: The Usable Past as a Resource for Social Advance in Early Modern Lemberg/Lviv
    (2014) Osipian, Alexandr
    The main purpose of this paper is to put the charter – for a long time seen as simply forgery – into a wider context of historical culture of the epoch. It also aims to investigate motive, means, and opportunity, as used by the social actors – the forgers. The examination of the forgeries not only uncovers the historical imagination of their producers but also helps our better understanding of the historical culture of the epoch and its social circulation in a given society. The study of “Prince Fedor’s charter of 1062” examines how urban elites accepted the noblemen’s political and historical culture and used it for their own purposes. The author of the paper examines how the social aspirations and dominant cultural framework in the host society influenced the wealthy Armenian Diaspora to promote some possible options of the usable past and to abandon other ones. Finally, it shows how the elements of all these options were combined into a new narrative in the nineteenth century, in accordance with the historical culture of Romantic nationalism.