Ambicoloniality

This chapter introduces the notion of “ambicoloniality,” describing Russia’s actions as simultaneously aimed at colonizing Ukraine and engaging in self-colonization through affection. Ruled by the revival of the past through propaganda, the colonizer destroys its own state to conquer another country and, in so doing, subjects its power to the power of the formerly oppressed. The full-scale invasion, seen by Russia as a struggle for power, is considered in this chapter as part of a wider process of ambicolonial thinking, in which the invader becomes subject to its colonialist behavior and propaganda and loses control over reality. The ambicolonial processes intensified with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia and Ukraine’s physical necessity of anti-colonial defense. Ambicoloniality as the filtering of mutually important influences over the shared border draws on the postcolonial notions of “hybridity” and “ambivalence,” yet it presents significant differences in its formative mechanisms. It focuses not as much on shared characteristics and implicit syncretism but on mutual influences, both symbolic and political, that are rooted in the impact performed through media, propaganda, and direct contact in the context of trauma. The idea of ambicoloniality subverts the notion of the coloniality of power because it does not consider colonialism a product of the inequality of economic and political positions and the initial difference in ethnic- and nation-based rigid hierarchies of power, including subject–object relationships. Rather, it sees power as a symbolic exchange rooted in the semiotic strength of the parties involved. This theory helps explain the particular model of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine across the shared border, as it focuses on the filtering of power influences rather than on a particular vector of impact. This chapter considers literary, audiovisual, and visual reflections on Ukraine’s growing influence on the Russian cultural field, including Russia’s appropriation of Ukrainian cultural legacies, and traces a unique theoretical model that suits the situation where decolonial epistemological borders overlap with geographical ones.