Живодійність

Живодійність —zhivodiynist’— is a Ukrainian neologism that has become an authorial concept, naming the power through which a life becomes 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 between them something that did not exist before begins to come into being. According to philosophers of dialogue, the I needs a You in order to constitute itself as an I. That You alters the I’s perspective, prevents it from remaining identical to itself, and interrupts its sovereignty. The question then becomes inevitable: who is the You?

I propose an equation: I + You = the World, in which the + is not a sign of addition, because this is not a matter of quantity, nor even merely of the act of speaking. Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano bears this out. I conceive of the + as a unit of meaning: a space in which something new can emerge, something that neither the I nor the You contained separately.

When does an encounter cease to be mere coexistence and become Живодійність (zhivodiynist’), living as a reality-creating power? Perhaps it is a matter of taking risks, allowing ourselves to be affected by others, and producing new meanings, because "living only costs life."

I do not believe I have an answer. Zhivodiynist’ is born from that question and from a few intuitions.