Post-Colonial Consciousness and the use of folklorisms in the Novel “Baksy and Genghis Khan” by Arslan Koychiev

The article examines the poetic function of folklore motifs that interpret colonial and postcolonial manifestations in the novel “Baksy and Genghis Khan” by Kyrgyz writer Arslan Koychiev. The study aims to determine the literary and aesthetic function of folklorisms used by the author in interpreting postcolonial symptoms in the novel. It is known that the consequences of the policy of Christianization of the Russian Empire and Stalin’s political repressions served as an impetus for strengthening mutual confrontation between peoples who associate their origin with Genghis Khan, who conquered vast territories. Conscious distrust or denial of the historical mission of their ancestors, underestimation of such national values as religion, language and unconscious distance from their own historical and national identity among the representatives of generations affected by colonialism contributed to the unleashing of colonial policies. A similar trend is observed in modern post-Soviet societies. Along with this, the discourse of the said novel examines such political glimpses as the use of affixes unusual for the Kazakh language in surnames and the propaganda of comparing religion with opium in Soviet era. In the mentioned novel, the author gives the advantage of demonstrating the national and ethnographic specifics of the tradition of building burial structures with a dome for their deceased ancestors in the culture of the Kyrgyz and Kazakh peoples. By analyzing the context of the novel with hermeneutic, psychological, comparative typological, and anthropological methods, the tendency to displace the patronage function of zooanthropomorphic animals and birds (maral, deer, swan, wolf, eagle), considered the ancestors of the clan, which are found in the epics and legends of the Turkic peoples, in later periods by such owners of mystical sacred powers as Tengri, the cult of the spirit of ancestors, and the art of Baksy. The author of the article in his work comprehensively dwells on the methods of depicting colonial and postcolonial symbols in the work through folklorisms.