Normality, Ratio, Language: Witchcraft and its Nexus with the Discources of Power in “The witch of Konotop” by Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko

In the article, the linguistic instruments of construction of the nonnormative and irrational in the patriarchic society, which described in “The Witch of Konotop” by Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, are analyzed. The article is focused on the social instruments, discursive practices, and cultural preconceptions that regulate lifestyle, habits, behaviors, and the modes of thought in the patriarchic society. In “The Witch of Konotop”, irrational behaviors and / or nonconventional linguistic modes indicates about marginality and nonnormativity. In this context, the idea of normativity is not an abstract speculative construction — it is an instrument for hierarchy establishing and power exercising. Repetition and parody, which are the linguistic instruments of power discourse deconstructing, are analyzed in the context of witchcraft. A witch in Kvitka-Osnovianenko’s text as well as in the patriarchic society is an embodiment of the Other who is an object of fear, fascination, and aggression. In this context, the alterity is not restricted to gender, but includes national, religious, and even social components. Within this shadowy, marginalized space of displacement, the irrational and nonnormative dominate, and the conventionality of language as well as the legitimacy of power and social hierarchies are in doubt. A witch in the patriarchic society symbolizes chaos that results in entropy and therefore needs deterrence and control. “The Witch of Konotop” shows that witchcraft in a traditional patriarchic society is more than archaic pagan relics which have survived in a Christian world. It is chaos in opposition to a streamlined and hierarchic world, anarchy in opposition to the institutionalized power, the rooted and authentic in opposition to the external — that is, everything that escapes biopolitics and is connected to the alterity as it is. The feminine in the traditional patriarchic society is one of the modes of this alterity. After all, power beyond the civil and religious institutions becomes diffuse, non-hierarchical and, therefore, gets out of control.