INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CULTURAL RESEARCH

Oleg BOZHKOV

The Sociological Institute of the RAS – Branch of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SI RAS – FCTAS RAS), Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Senior Researcher

From Biographies to Certificates "eyewitnesses"

Some important turns there were in the humanities in the twentieth century. The first turn focused the attention on "simple man". The second turn presented synthesis of the humanities and intersection of research topics as well as the close attention to everyday life. And final turn provoked an analysis of unique cases and a rejection of global generalizations. Author considers the influence of these turns on our time and fixes a certain tendency to research biographies (as a rule, lives of outstanding people) and autobiographies (self-presentations) of "man in the street". A review of the articles of this issue is also provided.

Key words: biography, autobiography, personal documents, everyday life, interdisciplinary approach, Annales school, case study, review of articles.

References

Vitaliy DARENSKIY

Taras Shevchnko National University, Lugansk
Associate Professor, PhD in Philosophy

Biography as a Literary Form of Philosophizing

The author analyzes the biography as a literary form of philosophizing in which there is a synthesis of theoretical, artistic and historical thinking. The purpose of philosophical biography is defined as a concentrated transfer of integral cultural experience in its personal form. This genre sells the "personological" method, the essence of which consists in the consideration of various fields of traditional philosophical reflection through the "prism" of the personality of a particular person. Conceptualization of life is not built here on the model of the macrocosm, and the microcosm model. The theoretical concept of this model is not universal, and "uniquelies" – a particular way of conceptualizing a personal vision of the world. The existential impact of philosophical biography on the reader is in general conformity with the cultural model of "initiation" – the "second birth", that is a powerful incentive transformation of his inner world, development life horizon and moral qualities of the person.

Key words: philosophy, biography, personality, experience "uniquelies", reflection, genre.

References

Andrey IVANOV

Siberian University of Consumer Cooperation, Novosibirsk, Russia
Department of Philosophy, History and Law,
Professor, Doctor of Science in Philosophy

A Subject out of Supervision in Russian Biographies of the XIXth Century

Biography is a typical form of representation and acceptance of the autonomous person's value in the culture of Modern. One of the most important structural attributes of the Modern personality discourse is a negative identity – ability to distinguish himselve from the surrounding conditions and the denial of power of traditionally-paternalistic authority. The emergence of negative self-presentation in Russian biographies of the mid-nineteenth century is associated with the socio-cultural crisis and the formation of new social roles, nonconforming to caste-occupational structure of society. A case of new role reflected in the biographical texts is the communication center, endowed with connotations of moral opposition to the social order. Negative identity is realized in the opposition of transgressive behavior of the whole personality to the norms of secular culture. Denial of paternalistic supervision over the personality is considered on the case of "repressive biographies" and behavioral experiments, as reflected in the biographical documents. Those and others use strategies of false self-representation and open-ended statement about self-impenetrability for supervision.

Key words: subject, person, identity, self-representation, ego-document, ascriptive role, paternalism, Modern, tradition, repressive biography, performative function.

References

Ekaterina VASILYEVA

St. Petersburg State University, Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Faculty of Arts
Associate Professor, PhD in Arts History

Eugene Atget: an Artistic Biography and a Mythological Program

The genre of biography is an important phenomenon in the structure of Modern History and in the space of contemporary culture. Artistic biography is a specific material, included in the system of fine arts. Being an presentive description, the material of an artistic biography is an ideological program that defines our views of this or that master. Biography is an important tool in the creation of the artistic pantheon and in the mechanism of appropriation of the artistic status. This work is devoted to the artistic biography of Eugene Atget – one of the most notable and important photographers of the 20th century. His life and story is an important example that biography can be an instrument of determination of the artistic status. The past, collected and regulated, develops a mythological program and an artistic mystification. Biography of Eugene Atget is an important example. It shows that the image, the story of life and the art-program is a single system, which defines the borders of work.

Key words: Eugene Atget, Berenice Abbott, John Szarkowski, Maria Hambourg, photography, archive, catalog, artwork, biography, Paris, art myth.

References

Olga TARASOVA

Vaganova Ballet Academy, Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Department of Philosophy, History and Theory of the Arts
Doctor of Science in Philosophy, Associate Professor

Artistic Biography as an Ontology of the Present and Future: on the example of Creativity of Ayn Rend

The article is devoted to the analysis of actual worldview problems of culture, art, social history and philosophy of the XXth century. Including – the peculiarities of the ratio of consumer existence and creative creation as a moral choice of an individual in the Western civilization on the example of Ain Rend creativity.
Every culture and civilization develops its attitude to the time, learns to store it, produce it, spend it, accelerate or slow it down. Each culture develops its relation to both historical time and historical memory. Biography is a genre of written culture, a written type of memory and thinking, a tale of how the present is slipping into the past. How is the interpretation of the biography possible as a projection of the future, based on the unity of the past, present and future?
Ayn Rand or Alisa Zinovievna Rosenbaum (1905 – 1982) is a Russian star of American literature of the twentieth century. She was born in St. Petersburg, she graduated from the Leningrad University and script courses LGITMiK, listened to lectures N.O. Lossky, and at the age of 20 years emigrated to the United States. Her artistic and at the same time philosophical achievement – the creation of the author's "philosophy of objectivity" or "rational individualism." Her best novel is "Atlas" (1957) – for America, the most readable, after the "Bible," book. Criticism of " Atlas " is a female philosophical mythology, multidimensional, voluminous, but not possessing perfect integrity, and not absolute. But like any artistic mythological conceptualization, it proved capable of anticipating time and anticipating many events of the XXth – XXIst centuries.

Key words: time, history, memory, biography, world view, creativity, future, consumption, responsibility, pragmatism, philosophy of objectivism.

References

Aleksandra KYDRYASHOVA

Moscow State Pedagogical University (MGPU), Moscow, Russia
Institute of Pedagogic and Psychology of Education
Doctor of Science in Philology, Associate Professor

Autobiography Based Fiction: Artist and History

The article considers issues of the links between formation of a creative personality and history in the context of autobiographical text. The genre "story about myself" reveals vividly the significance of historical events perception in the formation of basic childhood impressions.
The empirical base is provided by the literary works of Russian prose: "Zapiski odnogo molodogo cheloveka" (1840-1841), "Byloye i dumy" (1852-1868) by A. Gertsen, "Poshekhonskaya starina" by M. Saltykov-Shchedrin and the importance of historical events is especially stressed in "Shkola" and "Obyknovennaya avtobiografiya v neobyknovennoye vremya" by A. Gaydar.
The subject of the article is focused on historicism of the children's recollections, memory of the epochal events and evaluation of the social environment which unifies the autobiographical methods of A.I. Herzen, M.Y. Saltykov-Shchedrin and A.P. Gaidar. On the other hand the chosen perspective which affected the authors' self-consciousness demonstrates singularity of the individual style of each writer.
Relations between the Poet and History are uncovered in connection with the time of the historical birth. The epochal events of the world and national history are poeticized and become "THE GRAND EVENTS OF THE CHILDHOOD" in the plot of the autobiographical narration. Moreover, two interconnected processes, those of poeticizing and prosaicizing in the theory of the autobiographical prose not only express the author's antinomical attitude towards ambiguous and contradictory historical realities, but rather attract attention and determine the vector of the values.
The connection of an artist and history is revealed in the author's personality formation and self-awareness.

Key words: autobiography, artist, history, the initial event, the final event, style of history, individual style, pathos.

References

Veronika NOURKOVA

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
Department of General Psychology
Doctor of Science in Psychology, Associate Professor

Life – Instructions for Use: The results of graphical exploration of a Cultural Life Script

Any culture is aimed to design the way of living for individuals in accord with socially appreciated set of values, ideals, and norms. In this vein, the present paper considered the cultural archive of biographies as a diverse embodiment of cultural life scripts (CLS). These scripts serve three groups of functions: informative, normative, and motivational. All functions of CLS become significant at life-scale perspective resulting in normative patterns of behavior. The differences between sociological and psychological optics toward biographies were discussed in the first part of the paper. The former takes CLR for collective representations of prototypical human life partially acquired by the members of the society. The latter views CLR as a kind of cognitive scheme, i.e. mental structures determining perception, memory and reasoning about a personal life. We stress that individual acquisition of CRL consists of generalization of biographical materials into the form of "life concept", which is predominantly emotional rather than logical.
In the empirical study reported in the second part of the paper we extended traditional methodology in the field of CLR research by a lifeline method. The sample consisted of 214 volunteers. Participants were instructed to produce lifelines of an ordinary human being that required them to identify the most important events of his/her life, to title them, to find an appropriate place for each event around the timeline, providing the age when each event happened, and expressing the emotion associated with each event by distance from the timeline (below the line for positive ones or above the line for negative ones). The data were analyzed with respect to the content, emotional profile, and time distribution of events for the whole CLS and by decades.
Events that had been nominated by at least 20% of the participants were considered as core events of CLS (17), while those that had been nominated by at least 4% of the participants were considered as periphery events of CLS (38). Results showed that events such as having a first child, marriage, entering university, having a grandchild, beginning school, death of parents, retirement, falling in love, and first job emerged in more than 50% of protocols.
Contrary to the commonly cited effect of "bump" for positive events addressing to the second and third decade of typical life course, our data suggested that the second and the fourth decades were overrepresented in lifelines. Participants expressed the most positive attitudes toward the first and the third decades while the fifth, seventh and eighth decades accumulated the most negative events. The notable finding consisted in emotional equality of the fourth and the sixth decades. This result highlights the contemporary slogan "Fifty is the new thirty". We proposed that the balancing of negative emotional attitudes of life periods 40-50 and 60+ may be achieved by psychological intervention and would be helpful in enhancing psychological well-being.

Key words: cultural life script, cognitive schema, life path, lifeline method.

References

Veronika ALTASHINA

St. Petersburg State University, Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Faculty of Philology
Department of History of Foreign Literature
Doctor of Science in Philology, Associate Professor

Metalepse as an Autobiographical Practice in the French Literature of the XVIIIth Century

The article considers the use of the metalepsis as an autobiographical practice by French writers of the XVIIIth century – Denis Diderot and the Marquis de Sade. The concept of narratorial metalepsis, proposed by G.Genette in his book "Figures III", is widely analyzed in modern Western European literary criticism. In Russia, this term has not received sufficient coverage and application, therefore, the article makes a brief overview of this concept. The transgression of the boundaries between narrative levels enables writers of the XVIIIth century, Diderot and Sade, not only to insert their own philosophical ideas and make them available to the public, but also to criticize the ideology of Enlightenment through the use of discursive metalepsis. Internal metalepsis and mise-en-abyme give the opportunity to popularize their own works, performing in part an advertising function. External metalepsis allows to turn to the events of the author's life in order to criticize opponents and defend the rightness of their own original ideas.

Key words: narratorial metalepsis, mise-en-abyme, diegetic level, extradiegetic level, discourse, boundaries, transgression, Diderot, Sade, Enlightenment.

References

Yulia TURUSHEVA

Psychological Institute of Russian Academy of Education, Moscow, Russia
PhD Student

Autobiography: the World Where I Could Live

The article touches upon the autobiographical narrative as a special form of reflection, which makes it possible to extract meaning from experience, to define and translate one's understanding of being-in-the-world into a general cultural field. Autobiography is considered as the interaction of a deeply personal, subjective and social, cultural and historical. The concepts of meaning and events are analyzed as key to understanding the phenomenon of autobiography. t is shown that the subject gives experience the status of the event through narration. It is argued that an autobiographical narrative can amount to some opposition to established forms of understanding reality and, through its ability to construct and translate meaning, influence cultural canons.

Key words: autobiography, autobiographical narrative, personal meaning, event, experience, reflection.

References

Tatiana MEDVEDEVA

Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
Research Scientist, PhD in Historical Sciences
Academic Secretary of the Archaeographic Commission of the RAS

Memoirs and Epistolaries of D. N. Sverbeev – between Typicality and Originality. Essay to the Problem of Specific Features of Historical Sources

The article is dedicated to the comparative analysis of memoirs and epistolary texts by D. N. Sverbeev (1799-1874). He was a retired diplomat and had extensive relations in Russian society and were on friendly terms with many public figures of their time, welcoming both westernizers and slavophiles. A comparison of his memoirs written in the late 1860s and letters to his daughter Sophia from the same years shows the similarity of these texts' purposes. The article considers the situation in which letters play a role of a memoir, in the meanwhile keeping letter shape.
Dmitry Sverbeev in his letters informs his daughter about the news of life in Moscow and adds to them memories of the events connected with the present. In these memoirs he follows his principles: he pays a lot of attention to individuals and historical excursions and avoids extreme points of view in social and political issues.
The youngest daughter of the memoirist Sofia Sverbeeva (1842-1903) was in those years the main assistant of her father in the work on memoirs and supported him on many issues, what undoubtedly influenced their correspondence.
In addition, it is possible to compare memoirs of D. N. Sverbeev with his early letters (for the 1820s). Here we compare the narrative of the same events in the current correspondence and in memoirs written almost 50 years later and observe a great difference in their presentation.

Key words: source studies, comparative method, memoirs, correspondence, D.N.Sverbeev, S.D.Sverbeeva, personal archive.

References

Svetlana PAVLOVA

National Research Saratov State University, Saratov, Russia
Department of Russian and Foreign Literature
PhD in Philology, Associate Professor

Autobiographical Memory in Memoirs of Mademoiselle de Montpensier and Cardinal de Retz

Following the current scientific interest in autobiographical memory, the paper looks into its structures and functions in the memoirs of Mademoiselle de Montpensier (1627-1693) and Cardinal de Retz (1613-1679). In the late XVII century the genre of memoirs came to be differentiated from historiography by depicting the past from the standpoint of the witness participant; by explicit presence of the author's point of view. The authors' reliance on memory while writing their memoirs is shown as a factor of their self-awareness, of the effort to inscribe the meaning of their lives. Remembering the past helped Mademoiselle de Montpensier to keep her identity, while Cardinal de Retz creatively transformed his past, revealing in the process his potential as a man of letters. The memoirists' autobiographical memory is the source of their portrayal of unique historical moments, it also grounds the picture of their respective outlooks. However, the nature of autobiographism in the texts under consideration is defined as much by the course of individual life as by general historical context, by memoirists' aristocratic rank, by the influence of the gallant-heroic culture.

Key words: autobiographical memory, memoirs, XVII-th century French Literature, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, Cardinal de Retz.

References

Alexandra VINOGRADOVA

University of Rouen, Normandy, France
Department of Literature, PhD Student

Claude Roy and Régis Debray: Two Examples of French Political Autobiography

The French Communist Party (PCF) has played a key role in the political history of France in the XXth century. Different events in the Soviet Union and pro-Soviet countries, and some other reasons, have often made the PCF members to take a distance or completely renounce communism. Thus, a community of former French communists was formed, who voluntarily decided to leave or were excluded from the PCF. Numerous ego-documents, such as memoirs, autobiographies, diaries, essays, are left behind by the writers represented a considerable part of the French communists. Among these works of the authors related to communism, a special place is occupied by the texts of ex-communists, which share certain common features and can be defined by a generalized concept of "self-criticism". The article deals with the distinctive features of this literary practice of self-criticism using two examples of political autobiography: Claude Roy and Régis Debray..

Key words: French literature, political autobiography, egodocuments, communism, self-criticism, ex-communists, France, French Communist Party, Claude Roy, Régis Debray.

References

Julia IBRAEVA

National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), Moscow, Russia
Post-graduate School on the Historical Sciences, PhD Student

Epistolary Novel of the First Quarter of the XVIIIth Century in the in long-term Correspondence between Alexander Danilovich Menshikov and his Wife

Personal correspondence is the main source of information about the private life of the nobility of Russia in the first quarter of the 18th century. The letters are resource that contains information about everyday life details, feelings, thoughts and anxieties that make up the essence of a person's private life, and reveals his/her-self in the best way possible. However, in Peter's Russia the epistolary genre had just started to evolve and there are few letters left, as there was no tradition of keeping them in family archives (in contrast to business ones). As a result, up to date, just a few epistolary complexes of the first third of the XVIII century have been known, so the A.D. Menshikov's family correspondence is a rare phenomenon. This, in fact, is a family autobiography, in which the most significant events and figures of the era of transformation are incorporated.
The article analyzes the correspondence between prince and princess Menshikov, which had begun four years before their marriage. This complexes is unique because of the enormous volume of the correspondence that has survived – more than 400 letters – and the length of the period it covers (approximately from 1700 to 1726). The very special circumstances of the birth, development and tragic final of this love-friendship relationship are closely linked with the context of the epoch.
The epistolary heritage of the Menshikovs' couple adds new strokes to the portrait of the "half-sovereign ruler" and makes it possible for the scholar to analyze to reveal some new features of the Russian epistolary culture of the era of reforms and to show changes in the ideals of married life and female models of behaviour.

Key words: private life, family correspondence, epistolary culture, A.D. Menshikov, Arsenyev Sisters, Darya Menshikov.

References

I.

II. Unpublished: The Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA)

Julia ZAITSEVA

St. Petersburg State University, Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Faculty of Psychology, Associate Professor of the Department of General Psychology ,PhD in Psychological Sciences

Autobiographical Time in Self-Narratives of Different Generation Members

Autobiographical time as a multidisciplinary phenomenon can show contradictory trends in self-identity processes of modernity. Autobiographical temporality is considered as an existential ability of human mind to process time and synthesize life events and identity in intelligible, meaningful composition. Autobiographical time in self-narratives of three generation (SG, BB, and X) members of three age groups (20-40; 40-60; 60-80), written in three cultural-historical contexts (discourses of 1990th; 2000th and 2010th) was empirically studied and discussed in theoretical frames of historical cultural, phenomenological and social-cognitive perspectives. Agency reflected in the composition of autobiographical memories and self-views in time as a causal-motivational type of narrative coherence, tends (i) to increase in informational style identity of modern generation and (ii) decrease in discourse demands of historical context from 1990 to 2010 and from SG to X generations. Changing the patterns of auto-narrations might affect the future identity construction processes.

Key words: self-narrative; temporality; time perspective; autobiographical time; agency; discourse; autobiographical memory; autobiography; multidisciplinarity; narrative coherence; identity style; narrative identity; generation; phenomenology; Self.

References

Oleg BOZHKOV

The Sociological Institute of the RAS – Branch of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SI RAS – FCTAS RAS), Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Senior Researcher

Svetlana IGNATOVA
(09.07.1967 – 03.11.2017)

The Sociological Institute of the RAS – Branch of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SI RAS – FCTAS RAS), Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Researcher

On the Dynamics of the Family Status in Russia in the XIX – XXI centuries (based on the data of Biographical Collection of the Sociological Institute of FCTAS RAS)

The article deals with the mechanisms of family status change on the background of cardinal social structure transformation in Soviet and post-Soviet society based on autobiographical texts and biographical interviews. Attention is drawn to the influence of the state's social and educational policies on the dynamics of the social status.
The empirical data is biographical texts of the Biographical Collection of the Sociological Institute of FCTAS RAS.

Key words: family status, professional status, transformation of social statuses, self-identification, social structure.

Список литературы

Tamara NAUMENKO

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
Professor of the Faculty of Global Studies
Doctor of Science in Philosophy, Professor

Daria MOROZOVA

Independent Researcher

Cultural Dimensions Theory of Geert Hofstede as a Methodological Basis for the Study of Modern Social Processes

The relevance of the topic of the article is determined by growing attention of researchers of various fields to the influence that culture has on modern socio-economic and political processes. The article considers the cultural dimensions theory of Geert Hofstede, which is used as a methodological basis for analyzing the organizational cultures of individual enterprises in Russia and Germany, illustrating not only the importance, but also the accuracy of the developed Hofstede concept and its great heuristic potential. The article considers Hofstede's model, consisting of six criteria: power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, long-term orientation and indulgence. It establishes areas of strength and weakness of this approach and conclude that on the basis of this theory it is possible to develop mechanisms for regulating socio-economic and political processes both in the context of growing globalization and in times of cyclically recurring economic and political crises.

Key words: culture, intercultural communication, G.Hofstede, cultural dimensions theory, power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, long-term orientation, indulgence, socio-economic processes.

References

Tatiana ARTEMYEVA

Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Department of Theory and History of Culture
Doctor of Science in Philosophy, Professor

The Life and Surprising Adventures of a Romantic Prince

The article is devoted to Andrei Bolotov's translation from German into Russian of the anonymous work "The Life and Surprising Adventures of Carl Eduard, a pretender of Great Britain, French and Irish crown dead in 1788" (M., 1794). The text represents a biography of Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788) known also as Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Young Pretender, the participant of the 1745-1756 rising. Bolotov addresses to events of the 1745 rebellion in Scotland, being under the impression of Louis XVI's execution in 1792 in France. He describes the unsuccessful attempt of a political revolt and the personal tragedy of the young Pretender to the British Throne. The article makes an assumption that Bolotov's interest in the political conspiracy and the attempted coup d'état is also connected with the fact that he barely escaped himself an involvement in a secret conspiracy against Peter III.
The article analyses the Russian society reception of the events in Scotland and, in particular, the reaction to the "Lettre des Ecossois an l'imperatrice de Russie. Edimbourg [i.e. Paris], 1745", in which Scottish patriots asked Elisabeth Petrovna to help them and to take into account similarities of lives of the Russian Empress and the Scottish Pretender.
A dramatic description of the coup d'état and a detailed description of the unfortunate fate of the young prince make it possible to interpret the text also outside the historical narrative, making it a fact not only of historical description but also of artistic prose.

Key words: Andrei Bolotov, Charles Edward Stuart, XVIII century, Russia, Scotland, Jacobites, romanticism.

References

Yuliya LOBANOVA

Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Department of Theory and History of Culture
PhD in Cultural Studies, Associate Professor

Сity as Biographical Factor (on the Example of St. Petersburg)

The article analyzes the possibilities of applying the biographical method in cultural research. In contrast to art history and history, culturology seeks to deduce arguments about single phenomena on a typical level. This approach can be used productively in considering biographical data. At the same time, the socio-cultural realities of the era, the country, and the city can serve as a context. The city such is a context and the biographical factor at the same time in this article. We use the examples of St. Petersburg' culture personality's, whose formation took place in the second half of the XIX – the beginning of the XX century, to define the common grounds of their perception of St. Petersburg not as an abstract idea (symbol) but as a comfortable, aesthetically colored habitat. We made a parallel between the perception of the city in the periods of positivism and postmodernism.

Key words: biographical method, culturological methods, typology, typical level, city, city culture, perception, positivism, romanticism.

References

Guylchokhra SEYIDOVA

Chairperson of the Branch of UNESCO Chair on Comparative Studies of Spiritual Traditions, their Specific Cultures and Interreligious Dialogue in the Northern Caucasus, Derbent, Russia
Associate Professor of the Department of Legal Sciences and Humanities of the Derbent Branch of Dagestan State University
Teacher Emeritus of the Republic of Dagestan, PhD in Philosophy

Derbent as the First Center for the Distribution of Muslim Culture in the Caucasus

The article is devoted to the review of the penetration and approval of Muslim culture in ancient Derbent, which acted as the main center for the dissemination of Middle Eastern cultural traditions on the extreme northern border of the range of the early Muslim world. It shows how the "driving forces" of this culture – the Arabic language and Islam – penetrated the region with the conquest of Arabs, but for many centuries not only survived them, but also became an integral part of the cultural life of local peoples, played a huge role in the formation of spiritual culture and moral values.

Key words: Derbent, Bab al-Abwab, Arab Caliphate, Muslim culture, Islamic education, madrasah, mekteb.

References

Aleksandr SKIPERSKIKH

National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), Perm, Russia
Professor of Humanities Department, Doctor of Science in Political Science

Official and Unofficial Art in the "Silent" Culture: View of Nonconformists

In this article, the author tries to determine the ratio of official and unofficial culture in relation to the work of nonconformist artists. The author is interested in the question related to the causes of the emergence of nonconformism, which originated in the bowels of official Soviet art, and has become over time a kind of intellectual consolation and an alternative language of speaking in Soviet cultural discourse. Soviet experience shows that the experience of resistance through art for informal intellectuals could be to some extent effective.
The author considers existing definitions of nonconformism and practice of conceptualization of this phenomenon, about which there are discussions, up to the present time.

Key words: power, intellectuals, legitimation, nonconformism, official and unofficial art, protest, resistance, Soviet culture, USSR, totalitarian culture.

References

Irina SPIVAK

Institute of Cytology, Russian Academy of Sciences, St.Petersburg, Russia, Senior Research Fellow
St.Petersburg State University, Faculty of Biology, Associate Professor
St.Petersburg State Politechnical University, Chair of Medical Physics, Associate Professor, PhD in Biology

Arina URAZOVA

Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), Halle (Saale), Germany
Faculty of Medicine, Phd Student
Halle University Clinic, Researcher

Andrey ZAKHARCHUK

S.M.Kirov Military Medical Academy, St.Petersburg, Russia
Lecturer, PhD in Medical Sciences
St.Petersburg State Institution of Healthcare – Hospice No.1

Dimitri SPIVAK

D.S.Likhachev Russian Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage, Russia
Head of Center for Basic Studies in the Sphere of Culture
Human Brain Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, St.Petersburg, Russia
Principal Research Fellow, Doctor of Sciences in Philology

Perception of Traditional / Non-traditional Music and its Influence upon Life Expectancy: Preliminary Report.

Article 1: Telomere Length

The paper presents preliminary results of a complex study of psychological aspects of perception of music and their molecular biological correlates. 65 normal, young, Russian-speaking urban dwellers were divided into 3 subgroups, one of which passed a course of light classical music, another one of modern designer music, the third one of sounds of nature. The former type of music was regarded as belonging to cultural heritage of the subjects ('traditional music'), the latter one, as not belonging to it ('non-traditional'one), the third type of audiostimuli was used as control. The course consisted in listening to the music of a definite type for 2 weeks, 90 minutes a day. Each subject was examined twice, e.g. prior to the course, and right after it. Psychological survey comprised 6 questionnaires, revealing levels of mood and neuroticization, levels of activation basic psychological defense mechanisms and strategies of stress coping, intrinsic religiosity, and features of altered states of consciousness, temporarily induced in the service of the ego. Details of biography and of anamnesis were registered simultaneously. In each case, samples of blood (5 ml) were taken, which allowed us to conduct study of molecular biological correlates of the psychological shifts, at the level of such stress markers as telomere length, and telomerase activity, often regarded as predictors of life expectancy. In processing the samples, contemporary hi-tech methodologies were applied, primarily real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (PCR) by R.Cawthon. As a result, telomere length was proved to increase in the case of the subgroup which passed a course of traditional music, and to fall in the case of the control subgroup. The difference between them was statistically significant. The 'non-traditional' subgroup proved to occupy intermediate position between the 'traditional' one, and the control subgroup; no statistically significant differences were found in this case. As a result, perception of 'traditional' music was tentatively linked to stress reduction, and to an increase in life expectancy. This conclusion was corroborated by psychological data, primarily by the index of level of neuroticization, which tended to fall as a result of passing a course of 'traditional' music. This major shift was most possibly supported by general decrease of tension of such primitive strategies of coping with stress as avoidance, and confrontation. Judging by absolute values, these psychological shifts took place in the intervals which were proper for norms. At the same time they were statistically significant. This means that not having conditioned considerable alteration of consciousness, our music course gave impetus to definite psychological trends, directed towards stress reduction in the case of 'traditional' music.

Key words: perception of music, cultural heritage, telomere length, stress reduction, life expectancy.

References

Olga AVERYANOVA

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia
Chief of Department of Photographic Art
PhD in Art History

Man Ray as Fashion Photographer: from the Utilitarian and Descriptive Limitations to the Kitsch

The article deals with one of the important aspects of the work of French photographer and American-born artist Man Ray – photographs of fashion and his collaboration with popular women's magazines in the 1920-1930s of the 20th century. The use of rayography, solarization, montage and other technologies in commercial photography can be considered as part of the process of formation of "spectacular" representation, and at the same time as the commercialization of modernist strategies. Man Ray identified himself as an artist, but was engaged in various artistic practices: he made objects, collages, graphics, experimented in the movie. He took an active part in the life of Dadaists, became included in the Surrealist circle, made photographic portraits of people related to "Paris Bohemia" who to a large extent developed his reputation.
The spirit of experimentation, together with the purely practical necessity of survival, made the application of innovative techniques logically justified for the artist himself. Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, of course, remaining mass-market magazines, invited the artist to show 'advanced ideas' to large audience. The art has sought to expand the boundaries of the aesthetically acceptable.
The market also shows interest in current trends: shocking, provocative surrealism was reduced by him and adapted for the consumer perfectly. Striking visual techniques of modernism, through which was created the image in an obvious way, different from the representative of the original, causes a fundamentally different context of fashion depiction, diverting it away from practical consumer standards.
The overcoming of the utilitarian attributes allowed Ray to turn fashion photography into a special practice, where the similarity of the image with a referent was not derived from a thing, but was made by the work on the matter, which ineffability is specifically problematized by photography. The article discusses the formalist Ray practice, signifying the movement from the paradigm of things to the primacy of notation, and investigates the ways of the destruction of the theory of the index in the fashion photography. The importance of the photographer's heritage, like many other modernists working in the commercial sector, is belittled by the gradual transformation of the techniques which were discovered by them into the cliches of the mass culture. The author formulates the problem of the analysis of this situation.

Key words: Man Ray, photography, rayography, solarization, modernism, surrealism, fashion magazines, consumer culture, art, advertising.

References

Egor ISAEV

National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), Moscow, Russia
Faculty of Communication, Media, and Design
School of Media, Lecturer

Mariya KOMOGOROVA

National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), Moscow, Russia
Faculty of Communication, Media, and Design
School of Media, Student

The Reflection of War: Cultural Trauma in Post-Yugoslavian Cinema

This article is an attempt to describe international cinema discourse that has developed over the last decades around the events of the break-up of Yugoslavia through the notion of "cultural trauma".
In the first part of the article theoretical foundation of cultural trauma and some of its related terms (collective memory) are considered. On the basis of theoretical overview, in the second part of the article we build an analysis of the five post-Yugoslavian films, created in the period of the break-up of Yugoslavia and after it. The analysis of these screen-culture works is intended to give an idea about the international discourse, built around the break-up of Yugoslavia, and the role of the Yugoslavian cinematograph in its formation. Moreover, the article tracks the dynamics in the change of film narrations and portrayal from the earlier to the most modern ones.

Key words: trauma, cultural trauma, cultural memory, collective memory, social memory, violence, Balkan cinematography, war, national identity.

References