The Goddess of Erocult in Ukrainian Nation-Building: Archetypes of the Mistress and the Erotic Vitalism Beyond Reproductive Imperatives

In the crucible of post-war Ukrainian nation-building, where the imperatives of sovereignty, cultural revival, and demographic resilience intersect with the subterranean currents of desire, the figure of the erocult goddess emerges not as a mere fertility deity tasked with the mechanical reproduction of national subjects — those Aryan-golem progeny churned out by the archetypal “swine-mother,” the worn-out climacteric wife whose body serves as a vessel for biopolitical continuity — but as an embodiment of pure eros, vitalistic forces, and libidinal energies that animate the natural and social orders. This goddess, drawing from Jungian archetypes of the anima as a multifaceted projection of the collective unconscious (Jung, 1959), manifests in diverse subtypes of the mistress archetype, each infusing the national imaginary with erotic potency that transcends the reductive telos of procreation, instead channeling life-affirming urges toward creative, hedonistic, and dominative expressions. On the social plane, these mistresses double as mothers and wives, their roles blurring the boundaries between familial duty and illicit passion, thereby subverting the patriarchal hierarchies that consign women to reproductive drudgery. The dominatrix subtype, evoking the Amazonian warrior, asserts a commanding presence that inverts power dynamics, while the quiet witch, exemplified by Maria Tykha, embodies esoteric wisdom; Dasha Astafieva represents unbridled carnality and hedonistic delight; and actress Natalka Denisenko incarnates the eternal girl, radiating purity, creativity, and solar joy. In contrast, the “mom-wives” — wives of war-scarred national heroes and aging Volyn matriarchs, bearers of tradition, national culture, and grant-funded NGOs — embody a desiccated, climacteric stasis, their bodies and psyches eroded by the exigencies of endurance rather than ecstasy. This dichotomy, analyzed through Freudian psychoanalysis as a tension between the life instincts (Eros) and the death drive (Thanatos) (Freud, 1920), underscores how nation-building demands not just population replenishment but an erotic revitalization that resists neoliberal commodification of desire, as critiqued in left psychoanalytic traditions like Wilhelm Reich’s emphasis on orgastic potency as a bulwark against authoritarianism (Reich, 1933). Modern French poststructuralism, particularly Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalytic mapping of desire as productive flows rather than lacks (Deleuze & Guattari, 1972), further illuminates how these mistress archetypes deterritorialize the Oedipal family structure, injecting libidinal investments into the body politic of Ukraine, where war’s traumas amplify the yearning for vitalistic affirmation amid ruins.