“The Attitude of Modernity” of Ignat Abdiralovich: The Belorussian Borderland as an Exemplary Ground for Philosophical Universalism

Abstract

The article is an analysis of the 1921 essay, Advechnym shliakham: Daslediny belaruskaga svetagliadu (“Going the Primordial Way. Studies of the Belorussian Worldview”), by the Belorussian thinker Ignat Abdiralovich. It begins with examining the place of Abdiralovich’s ideas in the historical dynamics of modernity and proceeds to discussing the originality of his interpretation of the social and historical experience of the Belorussians. The article focuses on the conceptual and methodological novelties in Abdiralovich’s text, which have to do with his take on the border position of the Belorussians between the Eastern European and Western European cultures. I argue that Abdiralovich reveals a heuristic character of the borderland existence of Belorussians. It is shown that the heuristics of the Belorussian borderland is grounded in the idea of fluid subjectness and is beneficial insofar as it allows us to overcome the limitations both of the traditional concept of the “belated nation”, and of the opposition between primordialism and constructivism.