Transitional Culture and Post-Colonial Ressentiment

Hundorova suggests a post-colonial interpretation of ressentiment as one of the "weapons of culture" and a key concept in phenomenology after Nietzsche. Examining ressentiment as a distinguishing feature of transitional culture, Hundorova notes the topicality of this concept in the analysis of colonial protests, revolutions, wars and uprisings. She emphasizes certain features of ressentiment including the existential envy of the Other's existence, the corporeal splintering of the subject, the suppression of the object of envy and its replacement by figurative substitutes. Regarding the post-colonial critique, Hundorova analyzes Andrzej Stasiuk's European ressentiment in the form of an "ideal cartography" and Yuri Andrukhovych's topos of "envying history."