On Mimicry and Ukrainians
On Mimicry and Ukrainians
Empire and the Gothic in Antonii Pogorel′sky’s The Convent Graduate
This chapter examines Antonii Pogorel'sky's novel The Convent Graduate (1830–33), set in Ukraine. The novel mockingly plays with the clichés of the Gothic tradition to subtly point to the true threat — the “menace of mimicry,” to use Bhabha's terminology. It discusses Ukraine as the “other” as it introduces to the reader the exotic low classes of Ukraine, not fully assimilated into the Russian imperial identity. It discusses how The Convent Graduate offers several competing models of education and the resulting cultural identification. Ukrainian mimicry, ruthlessly satirized in the novel, exposes its very object, the Russian imperial self, as a simulacrum, and thus calls into question the Russian colonial strategy of assimilation.
Keywords: Antonii Pogorelsky, The Convent Graduate, Ukraine, Bhabba, cultural identification, assimilation, Ukrainian mimicry, Russian imperial identity, Russian assimilation
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