Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2020 number

The author believes that the potential for using narrative in ethnographic research is not fully understood yet. At the same time, such a source in the field ethnographic practice can be considered massive. The article is devoted to a narrative analysis of the first published autobiographical text by F.E. Tokarenko, a descendant of the Poltava settlers in Siberia, in terms of cognitive possibilities of the “ethnocultural identity” concept’s content. The autobiographical text created in the 1980-1990s is not devoid of artistic expression, reflects the author’s ability to write about himself as a conditionally independent character, causality is traced in the presentation of events. In terms of methodology, the author proceeds from the fact that a person achieves self-awareness through narrative, its interpretation, continuous self-interpretation, with which he highlights certain moments of life meaningfull for him. Following psychologists, we consider narrative as the main cultural tool which helps to form and provides existence of ordinary consciousness or folk psychology, as well as “personality and I” (Bruner, 2004; Barsky, Gritsuk, 2010). In the research the author is guided by the conceptosphere concept, which is understood as the terminological designation of any set of concepts including those characteristics of a particular text (Kharchenko, Safonova, 2013). Narrative by F. E. Tokarenko reveals the atmosphere of Ukrainian peasant life, pictures of resettlement, hardships of immigrants’ way and arrangement in a new place through the prism of ethnocultural identity. F.E. Tokarenko describes the life of his grandfather, father and his own as a chain of events determined by fate over several historical periods of our country. In its presentation, we deal not just with factography, but moments of comprehension of life in the form of an autobiography, which traces the relationship of the Siberian, regional identity with Russian, Ukrainian ethnic identities. The autobiographical text by F. E. Tokarenko reflects transformations of his ethnocultural identity.