Deconstruction as a strategy for creating an alternative biography (based on P. Yatsenko’s novel «Nechui. Nemov. Nebach»)

Abstract

The research is determined by the transformation of worldview and ideology focuses in the modern national self-identification as well as by the need in generalizing specific processes of reformatting the canonic forms of literary biography. P. Yatsenko’s steampunk novel “Nechui. Nemov. Nebach” forms the basis for the analysis of the way the deconstructive strategy of the alternative biography creation is put into practice. The author’s concept proves to correlate with J. Derrida’s ideas about the denial of the universal source of literary meaning and about the transference of the sense-making centre within the aesthetic object. The concept of the decentralized structure (“free play”), implemented in P. Yatsenko’s novel, leads to the replacement, transformation, and transference of sense-bearing and formal text components. The play strategies of visualization, employed in the novel’s paratext, along with elements of alternativeness manifest the change in the polarity of the traditional binary oppositions and denial of the authoritative centre, which is characteristic of deconstruction. The integrity of Nechui-Levytskyi’s biography, which is realized in P. Yatsenko’s novel through the general worldview and ideological-and-aesthetic context, acquires other centres owing to the devices of structure deconstruction, such as romantic, ideological, adventure-and-mystery, humour-and-farce, religious, symbolic, and axiological centres.