Review of Giovanna Brogi's work. Cultural polymorphism of the Ukrainian world; foreword by S. Plokhiy, afterword by O. Pakhlоvska. K.: Duh i Litera, 2022. 520 p.
Authors:   Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Drozdovskyi Dmytro 
Published: May 2023

The research “Cultural polymorphism of the Ukrainian world” (2022) by the Italian Ukrainian scholar J. Brogi was reviewed in a critical analysis. The work represents a fundamental collection of academic studies about the revision of Ukrainian history and culture of the 17th-18th centuries. The research provides an attempt at historical reconstruction of important figures of politics and culture of the Ukrainian Early Modern period, which is characterized as an immanently polymorphic phenomenon. This feature determines its special vitality and is a factor in the consolidation of internal forces, which over time led to the consolidation of Ukrainian political state intentions and identity narrative. The main interpretive vectors regarding the Ukrainian world as a civilizational category have been systematized. For the first time, it was proposed to define the category of “polymorphism” as a factor of identity, a component of socio-cultural and political processes that took place on Ukrainian territory in the Early Modern period. The inhomogeneity of the Ukrainian socio-cultural dimension, which is represented in cultural works and reflected in archival materials related to the analyzed era, has been determined. A significant corpus of historical materials and archival data has been developed, which make it possible to reconstruct the portraits of key figures of the Early Modern period, to determine their worldview guidelines and political orientations. The works of J. Brogi, presented in the review, make it possible to represent the Ukrainian world as a component of the geopolitical and sociocultural map of Europe in the 17th-18th centuries, introducing the concept of the polymorphism of the Ukrainian world into the dimension of the latest Ukrainian studies. The interaction of Muslim, Jewish, and other influences in Ukrainian society and their reflection in the culture of the studied era has been discussed. The forms of reaction of the Ukrainian world to the images of the Stranger and the Other, which representatives of the Muslim and Jewish worlds used at different times, have been outlined. In the chapter “Judaica Ucrainica”, Brogi refers to a significant historical corpus, which explicates the textological evidence, in which the image of the Jewish component occupies a special place. Jews had to go through the procedure of renouncing their own faith, while for Ukrainian communities they were considered more dangerous and more threatening than, say, “Sratsyns”, representatives of the Muslim world. The cultural concept of polymorphism, which is presented in the studies of Professor Brogi, complicates the discourse of cultural and political phenomena, demonstrating that the inhomogeneity of such phenomena in religious, social, political and cultural configurations will determine such basic components of political history and identity as tradition, faith (religion), social stratification, a complex of ideas about “Own” and “Others” in various versions, etc. The research provides questions that require further discussion in academic circles. However, the reviewed work is a significant contribution to Ukrainian studies and it attests, without exaggeration, to the fundamental long-term work of Professor Brogi. Hence, the research “Cultural polymorphism of the Ukrainian world” raises the question of the category of "polymorphism" as an anthropological, sociocultural and civilizational phenomenon, the presence of which in the discourse of historical and cultural transformations gives grounds to talk about the civilizational significance of culture and nation. For the first time, the question of the "Ukrainian world" was raised as an important category that needs to be understood in the paradigm of political and cultural studies. Such a perspective of the scientific problem brings Ukrainian studies first of all into the sphere of global studies, convincingly demonstrating how the study of Ukrainian socio-cultural and political processes can be important for understanding contemporary political configurations and the special vitality that is inherent in a polymorphic world. The researcher revises the Ukrainian world precisely in the paradigm of its polymorphic nature, which is determined by various "configurations of configurations" of Ukrainian history in the context of European, Turkish, Muslim, and Russian influences and determinations. Separate interpretations of historical figures reveal various controversies that happened in the past and that determined the political development of the Ukrainian world in one or another vector.