CHOROBA JAKO METAFORA DZIEDZICTWA POSTTOTALITARNEGO. POWIEŚĆ INFEKCJA STEPANA PROCIUKA

The subject of the article is the impact that the experience of totalitarianism has on the identity of individuals and – because of the passing on of memory – on the next generations who have not been affected by political violence. As the subject of my analysis, I have chosen a novel by the Ukrainian writer Stepan Prociuk Інфекція (The Infection 2002). The issue of passing on distorted patterns of behaviour and identity to future generations was presented in this work through the metaphor of a disease that causes dysfunction of individuals and society as an entirety, and whose symptoms are visible on many levels of social and political life, as well as in the sphere of culture. The use of the disease metaphor is also characteristic of other Ukrainian authors who wrote in the first years of independence (Yuriy Izdryk, Yuriy Hudz’, Oksana Zabuzhko, Yuriy Andrukhovych)