Живодійність

Живодійність — zhivodiynist’ — is a Ukrainian neologism that has become an authorial concept, naming the generative power through which a life becomes a world.

I began with a question: How do we participate in the emergence of the world?

By the emergence of the world, I mean that event in which one presence affects another, one life responds to another, and something that did not exist before begins to take shape between them. According to the philosophers of dialogue, the I needs a Thou in order to become an I. That Thou alters the I’s perspective, prevents it from remaining identical to itself, and interrupts its sovereignty. The question then becomes inevitable: Who is the Thou?

I propose an equation: I + Thou = the World, where the + is not a sign of addition, since this is not a matter of quantity, or even of the mere act of speaking. Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano makes this clear. I conceive of the + as a unity of meaning: a space in which something new can emerge, something that neither the I nor the Thou contained separately.

When does an encounter cease to be mere coexistence and become Живодійність (zhivodiynist’), living as the creative power to bring reality into being? Perhaps it is a matter of taking risks, allowing ourselves to be affected by others, and generating new meanings, because “living alone costs life.”

Needless to say, I have no answers: zhivodiynist’ arises precisely from these questions and a few intuitions.