BORDER TOPOLOGY: EXPERIENCE OF DISTINCTION AND SELF-IDENTIFICATION IN THE PRACTICES OF CIVIC, NATIONAL, AND MILITARY-PATRIOTIC EDUCATION

Abstract

The article examines the phenomenon of the boundary as a key condition for creating zones of dialogue in contemporary educational and formative practices. Particular attention is paid to a topological conception of the boundary–as a space of transition, dialogue, and mutual influence–in shaping experiences of differentiation and self-identification within current practices of civic education and national-patriotic formation. The analysis focuses on distinguishing civic, national, and military-patriotic modes of education which, at the methodological level, constitute different yet interrelated ways of constructing identity. Their interrelation indicates a fundamental openness and mutual alignment within the complex spatial dynamics of cultural boundaries that delineate the symbolic and semantic limits of belonging to a community. Cultural boundaries do not necessarily coincide with geographic, state, or political borders; rather, they are typically topological–defined by the interaction between self and other. Ukraine has centuries of reflection on and regulation of the limits of self/other, evident in the cultural, social, and political practices of contemporary Ukraine. This experience includes both the adoption of foreign cultural models and the preservation of its own identity, generating a distinctive topology of self/other that fosters a cultural plasticity capable of adapting to external influences without losing internal integrity–manifested in art, literature, religious practices, and civic institutions across various periods of the Ukrainian nation’s colonial subjugation. The article demonstrates that this historically shaped experience of differentiation and self-identification not only defines Ukraine’s character as a cultural and political nation, but also frames contemporary debates on political borders and cultural alienation, the cultural status of borderlands, and the distinction between «hard» and «soft» borders in totalitarian and democratic worlds. The article concludes that understanding the boundary as a phenomenon of human world-perception, and as an experience of differentiation and self-identification within civic, national, and military-patriotic education, can contribute to the formation of a cultural community that is open, globally integrated, and at the same time distinctive.