Buriak L.

Ukrainian biography of "liquid modernity": a proposal for reflection

Abstract: The world, which has changed dramatically over the past three decades, puts on the agenda the need to rethink the relationship between humanities and society. In this regard, the modernization of the concept of national biography is one of the priority areas of humanities. The publication deals with debatable issues and formulates questions for scientific reflection. Modern Ukrainian biography is analyzed as a phenomenon, as well as cognitive and communicative resource, characterized by a natural contradictions. On the one hand, it has obvious successes and at the same time – imbalances, limitations, and stereotypes. Of particular relevance is the search for optimal biographical research algorithms that are in tune with the global challenges and intellectual demands of today's "liquid modernity" (Zygmunt Bauman), "uncertainty" (Tony Judt), "the end of the world as we know it" (Immanuel Wallerstein). The modern concept of Ukrainian biography, based on the interpretation of a person’s biography as a "non-linear structure", is oriented towards revealing a complex "biographical world" of a person. To achieve this goal, it is proposed to use a variety of reconstructions in the format of mosaic fragmentation, focused on effective communication with society. Remaining an important factor in the formation of identity, biography at the same me aims to overcome the limitations and "unscientific traps", the appearance of which is inevitable in the wake of patriotic moods. A necessary condition for the transformation of a biographical studies is the updating of its temporal and spatial characteristics, which implies a critical view to linearity as a dominant biography format, a variety of personalities with a "complex" biography, actualizing the biography of "Other", overcoming stereotypes, and the implementation of innovative research methods of "humanitarian turns" that open up prospects for combining empirical, theoretical and reflective aspects of research.

Keywords: biography, methodology of biographical research, "liquid modernity", linearity, stereotypes, "complex" biography, humanitarian "turns".

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.19.033     Citation

• Buriak L. (The Institute of Biographical Research of VNLU (Kyiv, Ukraine)) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4631-844X

Cite:
Buriak L. (2020). Ukrainian biography of "liquid modernity": a proposal for reflection. Biographistica Ukrainica, (19) 33-52. (In Ukrainan). https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.19.033

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