Essays by Oleh Shynkarenko on metamodernism, Ukrainian cinema, philosophy of science, and Soviet cultural history.
A collection of essays spanning metamodernism, film criticism, philosophy of science, and Ukrainian cultural history. Each piece blends close literary and cinematic analysis with broader social commentary — tracing how consciousness, time, memory, and meaning are shaped by the cultural moment we inhabit.
Philosophy Cultural Theory
A philosophical manifesto arguing that metamodernism — oscillating between irony and sincerity, between trust and scepticism — has superseded postmodernism as the dominant mode of contemporary consciousness. Explores Wes Anderson's films, the Triad of Uncertainty, and why counterintuition is the defining feature of the age.
Film Criticism Ukrainian History
How Soviet and Ukrainian cinema shaped — and distorted — the historical memory of war. A close reading of screen performances from Dovzhenko's 1928 silent propaganda to contemporary films such as Bad Roads, Cyborgs, and Donbas, examining how acting, language policy, and national identity intersect on screen.
From Counting Angels to Counting Likes
Philosophy of Science Epistemology
A genealogy of how positivism evolved — through logical empiricism, Popperian falsification, Foucault and Lyotard's postmodern critiques — into the post-truth era of social media, deepfakes, and AI-generated knowledge. Science as religion, and its inevitable successor.
Metamodern Oscillation in You Are the Cosmos
Film Analysis Metamodernism
Pavlo Ostrikov's 2024 Ukrainian science-fiction film analysed through six competing interpretive frameworks: courtly love, the "Million Red Roses" motif, Kubrick's 2001, existentialism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and geopolitical allegory. A demonstration of metamodern hermeneutics in practice. In Ukrainian.
Portrait of a Russian Intellectual as a Crocodile
Cultural Critique Soviet History
How the beloved Soviet cartoon characters Crocodile Gena and Cheburashka — originally a gentle satire of the Marxist intelligentsia — became icons of Russian imperialist propaganda deployed in the war against Ukraine. A study in the weaponisation of childhood nostalgia.
Metamodern Timescapes: The Changing Image of Time
Philosophy of Time Media Studies
From Newton's absolute time and Einstein's relativity, through McTaggart's idealist paradox, to the digiphrenia and narrative collapse of the smartphone era. A survey of how our relationship with time — mediated by cathedral bells, wristwatches, television, and Telegram — has transformed across four cultural epochs.