The genealogy of Ukraine’s complex identity

In her current research, Associate Professor Tokiko Ono, Faculty of International Studies, Utsunomiya University, Japan, is investigating the genealogy of Ukraine’s complex identity. This includes representation, identity and politics. She is focusing on the aesthetics and intellectual frameworks that construct the various subjects of her studies in order to contribute to Ukrainian and Russian literary studies. Ono is interested in how Ukrainians and Ukrainian lands are depicted in representations and the contrasts between representation and true identity. She wants to extract the aesthetics and intellectual frameworks that constitute the subject (we, I) in Ukrainian literary works and paintings, as well as the critical eye towards them, and to trace their historical development. For example, the works of Ukrainian writers Nikolai Gogol and Taras Shevchenko who were contemporaries share the same subject matter of the Ukrainian Cossack community in Left Bank Ukraine from the establishment of the Hetman State to the same period, yet while Gogol was active in confluence, Shevchenko was active in separatism. Both writers exerted significant influence while representing Ukrainian identity and representation and represent interesting examples of a turning point in the politics of representation around Ukraine. Ono has demonstrated that Ukrainian literature and art offer many perspectives through which Russia and Eastern Europe can be seen and understood. Her studies have broadened from old high culture through Russian‐French comparative culture studies, to include Ukraine, expanding her perspective to the cultural hegemony of the region.