Ruin and Reconstruction

This chapter sees ruin as an outcome of any war. Ukraine is presently immersed in physical destruction, incurring major economic losses; however, the cultural, political, and economic consequences may be far more dangerous for Russia due to its current global isolation. The period of ruin in Ukraine, after the war ends, will be decisive in determining the direction of decolonial processes, including linguistic policies and the decentralization of culture. Meanwhile, in Russia, questions surrounding the construction of a new political order will be of primary importance. This chapter explores possibilities and strategies for rebuilding identities and institutions, as well as for dissolving ambicoloniality. Reconstruction from ruin and regeneration are aspects that follow the ultimate decolonial aim: the erasure of the necessity for dismantling colonial elements due to the full transformation of epistemology and the dissolution of ambicoloniality. This chapter examines the consequences of ruination for ambicoloniality in both countries and its impact on their previous entanglement. Ruin is an essential concept for understanding the epistemological changes occurring in Ukraine—and more slowly, in Russia. The theory concluded in this chapter also contributes to a new vision rooted not in the dichotomy of imperial/decolonial, as Latin American sources propose, but in a dynamic model that considers a wider panorama of mutual influences, shifting borders, and actions that manifest changing symbolic power positions, fostering ambicolonial exchange. In the case of Ukraine and Russia, ambicoloniality led to a misconception of the power pyramid and the implosion of the remnants of the symbolic empire with the explosion of violence. The regeneration processes rely on what I call “internal hybridity,” as opposed to “postcolonial hybridity,” and I outline this systemic shift from one model to another and their contribution to the reconstruction and revival within this chapter.