Vytkalov S. Polesia as a unique location of cultural and artistic processes in Ukraine in the second half of the XX – beginning of the XXI century

Dissertation is devoted to the cultural analysis of the model of new locality, and also the definition of meaning and content of the terms «locus», «location» in the context of the modern Ukrainian culture of the mid of the XX – beginning of XXI centuries. Traditional markers of cultural and regional distribution in situations of «transit societies» do not work, and the classical model of definitions of regions from the standpoint of «ideal type» (according to M. Weber) in a non-classical paradigm is offset by the permanent state of cultural transitions with the prefix «post» (post-culture, post human, post-history, post-industrial society, etc.). This study represents a possible variant of constructing a non-classical model of local cultures outside of the consistent hierarchies of typologies and definitions of regions. This approach is relevant in view of the lack of clear and comprehensible culturological knowledge of modern classification system of regions of Ukraine (so-called cultural zoning). Cultural zoning is complicated by the fact that in the «transit» societies, modern changes and transformations do not have time to formulate in the permanent cultural patterns, the corresponding territorial location does not always coincide with the cultural parameters of a particular locus. In the dissertation, the term of a cultural region is separated from the more mobile concept of a cultural locus with the focus on the production and modelling of certain cultural and artistic locations. This principle is indicative and clear to distinguish between the regional boundaries of Polesia and Western Polesia in the context of the national cultural space and the cultural parameters of these loci. The necessity to take into account the antinomy among political and territorial, geographical, natural, racial, religious and confessional, language borders and borders of separate cultural loci has been proved. After all, any boundary (frontal) synergy makes transparent cross-sections between regions. Thus, the constant historical and ethnographic concept «Polesia «in the discourse of frontal transformation heterotopically «produces» and changes cultural and spatial definitions, forming the atomic integrity of individual locals / loci. So, the locus «Ukrainian Polesia «is at the points of intersection of such locals as «Western Polesia «and «Eastern Polesia «(respectively, the Right Bank and the Left Bank Polesia). That means, historical and ethnographic discourse appeals to the traditional definition of a cultural and territorial unit as a habitat for a particular ethnic group.