EPISTEMOLOGICAL DECOLONIZATION: FROM THE "ZERO POINT" TO LOCAL KNOWLEDGES

Abstract

The article addresses the problem of epistemological decolonization of Ukrainian philosophical discourse in the context of contemporary socio-political transformations and full-scale war. A critical analysis is carried out of the epistemology of the "zero point" as an epistemological construct that conceals its own geopolitical locality under the guise of timeless objectivity, thereby legitimizing the hegemony of Western modernity. The philosophical genealogy of this construct is traced systematically: from the Cartesian model of res cogitans, in which the subject constitutes itself through abstraction from embodiment and social rootedness, through Kant's transcendental analytics, which normalizes specifically European cognitive structures as universal human ones, to Husserl's phenomenological reduction, which reproduces the ideal of a "view from nowhere." Each of these steps is shown to deepen the "epistemic invisibility" of the localized subject, elevating the particular experience of certain societies to the status of a timeless standard. It is argued that the post-Soviet condition of "double peripherality" of Ukrainian discourse is a direct consequence of this epistemological matrix. Caught between a neo-imperial centre that wages ontological aggression and a global academy that marginalizes non-central voices, domestic discourse suffers two forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial – whereby Ukrainian warnings about Russian neo-imperialism were systematically discredited – and hermeneutical – whereby available conceptual frameworks prove incapable of adequately describing the experience of Ukrainian resistance. The inadequacy of the paradigms of J. Habermas and G. Agamben to this reality serves as a symptom of the fundamental limits of European modernity itself. It is demonstrated that the method of "border thinking" enables the transformation of liminal experience into an epistemic advantage and a resource for generating new global categories: post-traumatic subjectivity, radical solidarity, and existential resilience. These concepts are capable of enriching the global philosophical pluriverse and responding to challenges that classical Western paradigms fail to address.