INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CULTURAL RESEARCH

Mikhail UVAROV

Russia, St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg State University. Faculty of Philosophy. Department of philosophical anthropology.
PhD in philosophy, professor.

Cultural Geography in Perspective of Culturology (an Analytic Review)

The article deals with the development of cultural geography as a new research field in Russia. From the author's point of view, the history of cultural geography examines the fate of culturology in terms of the major problems, as well as the criteria, of institutionalization. However, culturology and cultural geography exist independently of one another today. Specialists in the field of cultural geography use the methodologies of semiotics, philosophy and culturology (cultural studies), but rarely apply them directly to culturology and philosophical knowledge. The author observes the general trends of the relationship between cultural geography, philosophy and culturology (cultural studies). Special attention is paid to the correlation among fields of cultural studies, urban studies, cultural studies, human [humanistic, humanitarian] geography, geopoetics, and sacral geography. A survey of contemporary publications in Russian and English is included.

Key words: cultural geography, culturology, cultural studies, human [humanistic, humanitarian] geography, poetic geography, geopoetics, sacral geography, cultural landscape, topochronos, urban studies

References

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Ivan MITIN

Russia, Moscow.
Russian Research Institute for Cultural and Natural Heritage.
Senior researcher.

Cultural Geography in the USSR and Post-Soviet Russia: The History of Development and Main Traits of Originality

The history of the development of cultural (initially socio-cultural) geography in the USSR is the main topic of the article. The subject first appeared in the 1930s-1940s with no regard for either the Russian school of anthropogeography or the emerging C. Sauer tradition in cultural landscape studies. Attempts to integrate cultural geography within Soviet geography during the period spanning 1940–1980 are described. The main reasons for establishment, the conceptual framework and unique features of 'humanitarian geography', newly established in Post-Soviet Russia, are discussed. A comparison between the original Russian school and leading Western concepts — like geosophy, geographical epistemology, new cultural geography and humanistic geography — is made.

Key words: cultural geography, humanitarian geography, cultural landscape, new cultural geography, humanistic geography, cultural turn, spatial turn, geosophy, history of geography

References

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Vladimir KAGANSKIY

Russia, Moskow.
Department of  physical geography and natural resources, Institute of Geography,
Russian Academy of Sciences, research associate

A Holistic Investigation of the Russian Cultural Landscape

The method of investigation is discussed as a complex expert examination, based on a theoretical geographical approach together with travelling and landscape hermeneutics. The spatial forms and semantics of landscape are the main focus of the article. The article presents the major findings of long-term investigations and views of the author regarding a conception of cultural landscape, in general, and the cultural landscape of Russia, in particular.

Key words: landscape hermeneutics, state, empire, conception, cultural landscape, landscape, space, scientific travelling, Russia, theoretical geography

References

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Olga LAVRENYOVA

Russia, Moskow.
Russian Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage named after D. Likhachev.
Leading researcher, PhD in Philosophy.

Semantics of the Cultural Landscape and Poetic Metaphors

The article discusses the semantics of a cultural landscape, defined by poetic metaphors. Poetry brings new images into the well established interaction between culture and space. At the same time, there is the priority of the poetic image, including spatial metaphors, which belongs to the area where creative consciousness depends on the sphere of the unconscious, expressed in cultural codes which, in turn, are themselves transformed, once the image is born. Using place names metaphorically brings a semantic aura to the relevant geographic object. It is a kind of discursive practice of culture in relation to space.

Key words: cultural landscape, semantics, poetry, metaphor

References

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Boris RODOMAN

Russia, Moskow.
Russian Scientific Research Institute of a cultural and natural heritage.
Center of Humanitarian Research of space.

Traditional Cultural Landscape: Basic Problems of Typology, Regionalization and Imagination

Typology and regionalization (zoning) are the major methods representing typical samples of the traditional exurban landscape, which deserves preservation as uniquely protected areas. Problems are considered with regard to the European part of Russia, specific types of landscaped areas, such as those in and around the environs of Moscow.

Key words: typology, regionalization (zoning), cultural landscape, the countryside, historical provinces (areas), the North and South of the Russian plain

References

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Vitaliy DARENSKIY

Ukraine, Kiev.
National Academy of Personnel Management / Center of Arts and Culture. Department of Theory and History of Culture.
PhD, Seigneur Lecturer.

Novorossia: The "Wound of Modernity"

The details of Novorossia, as a cultural region, are analyzed in this article. In addition, the worldview forms of intensive Modernity as a historical fact are also discussed. The phenomenon of an "existential wound", as a specific motive of Novorossian mentality and world-experience is examined in article. In addition, special attention is devoted to interpreting some historiosophic senses of the phenomenon of "New Russia". Finally, the article proposes the conception of Novorossia's regional identity.

Key words: Novorossia, modernity, identity, region, worldview

References

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Nadezhda ZAMYATINA

Russia, Moskow.
Moscow State University. Faculty of Geography. Leading researcher. Heritage Institute (Moscow).
Senior staff scientist. PhD in Geography.

The Sense of Location: Place in Mental-Geographical Spaces

The article examines the basic terms of space images' explanation in traditional geography: the concept of a territory, mental-geographic location, etc. Fundamental Russian cultural stereotypes of geographical location description are characterized. Two types of territory images are described; both have special structural ties with other territory images within a mental space.

Key words: concept of territory, mental-geographic space, description of a place location, conceptosphere, Russian cultural stereotypes

References

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Olga KROKINSKAYA

Russia, St-Petersburg.
The State Russian Herzen Pedagogical University (Herzen University).
Professor, Doctor of Social Sciences

Other Names for the Russian Dilemma: East — West

The problem of West-East connotations in Russian culture, and the social culture of post-Soviet Russia, continues to attract the attention of researchers. This article attempts to examine the subject in terms of sociosemiotics. Several socio-cultural values of relating to "western" and "eastern" characteristics are analyzed for this purpose. These include educational setting, the manifestation of gender stereotypes, as evidence of heterogeneity of thought in the aspect of functional brain asymmetry, and methods of data processing and interpretation of phenomena. In addition, the article deals with mythological and rational elements in the modern mentality and discusses modern people's relations to "western" vs. "eastern" civilizations; specifically, the U.S. and Asia. Moreover, it alsorefers to the adaptive nature of social archaism within the framework ofthe imperfect and incomplete structuralization of society. Empirical data regarding these aspects are presented from studies conducted by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR).

Key words: sociosemiotics, culture, sociology of culture, mental stereotypes, social unconsciousness, the "west-east" dilemma, socio-cultural values, gender characteristics of the society, archaic and modern

References

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Oxana KARNAUKHOVA

Russia, Rostov-on-Don.
Southern Federal University, Faculty of Philosophy and Cultural Studies,
Chair of Theory of Culture, Ethics and Aesthetics, associate professor, PhD.

Reconfiguration of Space in the Discourse of Postcoloniality

The article considers space issues and spatial changes within the framework of the globalization process, which is connected to the methodological intervention of geography in the sphere of cultural studies. Globalization is defined as a procedure related to the adoption of space, but also to its reconfiguration — the transformation of "geographically noticed" territory into a "culturally developed" place. Cultural geography's approach allows one to consider globalization within the context of the world's postcolonial development. The specific role of these processes is played by borders and the procedures for overcoming and crossing them. In a sense, space means finding the status of a symbolic capital, in accordance to which the system of communications is set up.

Key words: territory, space, place, globalization, postcoloniality, cultural imperialism, border, transfer

References

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Ekaterina SHAPINSKAYA

Russia, Moscow.
Russian Institute for Cultural Research.
Chief researcher. PhD in Philosophy, professor.

The Oriental Journey as an Escape from Everyday Life: the Phenomenon of Tourist Escapism

In the article, travel is regarded as one of the ways to escape from everyday life, and which plays an ever-growing role in human existence. The dynamics of daily life leads to the quest for new forms of escapism, in which travel has an important function. The article analyzes the role of travel in different historical eras and the changes in the semantics of travel, which is becoming more and more of an integral part of recreation and leisure time: tourism is now a legitate means by which to escape from everyday routine.The objective of this type of travel is often focuses not attaining knowledge of different cultures and peoples, but rather on the confirmation of stereotypes formed in popular culture, mostly under the influence of cultural industry, with the purpose of achievingfinancial profit. One of the most popular directions of today's tourist is the "Orient" or the "Far East", a construction based on mythical, often fantastic ideas, often unrelated to the true realities of the countries included in this region / concept. The article poses a number of questions connected with the changing cultural situation of the 21st century, clearly reflected in the phenomenon of travel. To be more specific, the desacralization of culture and the change in the meaning of pilgrimage, decentration and deconstruction of basic binary oppositions, "East/West" in particular, and their influence on the direction of tourist flows, the increasing role of virtual travel within an information society culture, which has been saturated with media images.

Key words: escapism, everyday life, routine, travel, tourism, orientalism, romanticism, culture industry, myth, demythologization, decentration

References

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Kevin HART

USA, Virginia.
University of Virginia, professor.

The Counter-Spiritual Life

Kevin Hart is a famous theologian, philosopher and poet. Currently, he is a Professor at the University of Virginia and amember of the "Association des Amis de Maurice Blanchot". In this study, he investigates how Blanchot's idea is modified over time and with relation to the corresponding ideas of Bataille, Eckhart and Judaic theology. Hart presumes that the fundamental sense of "contestation," as used by Blanchot, is something akin to"endless questioning" or "questioning without end."

Key words: French philosophy of the 20th century, literary criticism, contestation, fragmental writing, relation without relation, neutrality

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Konstantin OCHERETYANY

Russia, St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg State University, Faculty of Philosophy.
Department of Ontology and Theory of Knowledge. Post-graduate student.

Chaophony: Towards Ontology of the Image

This article examines a theme central to Western philosophy; namely, the interrelationship of voice, numbers, and image. Since the time of St. Augustine, voice theories have followed the logic of identity and differentiation, which has, as its basis, the concept of numbers. Numbers, in turn, have — from the Pythagorean views on harmony to later theories of a universe understood mathematically — come to serve as the regulating principle of being in many modern philosophical systems. The image, however, in its interstitial existence between the discourses of voice and numbers, has been relegated to a subordinate role. Taking this perceived lack of autonomy as his starting point, the author attempts to emancipate the image from the voco–numeric discourse, which had previously prevented its closer examination. He suggests that the image be constructed neither in terms of its opposite (voice), nor in terms of identity and differentiation (which Western metaphysics has traditionally taken to be the problem of numbers), but rather in terms of marginal phenomena, in discrete elements of the image such as gaps, gestures, and noise (vocal/visual). He refers to the conceptual intersection of these phenomena as chaophony. Analyzing this concept, both hermeneutically and historically, the author articulates the vital connection between body and image. Image, he concludes, produces itself at various breaking points in the same way as does a human body, while screaming: in screaming, the body reveals its numerical nature (the voice it produces breaks whilst remaining the same voice). Analogously, the image reveals its numeric nature in often-ignored artifacts, such as visual static, while still being recognized by the viewer as being the same image.

Key words: chaophony, logonecrosis, vocalization of somatic material, locus vocus, vocography, voice as decree, echo as presence, vocal construction of the image, chthonic call, chaophonic trace, cosmology of the body

References

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Vadim RABINOVICH

Russia, Moskow.
Russian Institute for Cultural Research.
Head of Department, PhD, professor.

On Non-Identity of Identity in Culture

Logic is the realm of the accidental. To think logically means to continue being surprised. The author of this article discusses ways in which to protect one's identity from splitting, cracking and doubling.

Key words: identity, logic, culture

References

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Alexander LYUSY

Russia, Moscow.
Russian Institute for Cultural Research, Seniour Rearcher.
PhD in Cultural Science

ALL — MARBLE COMPASSES AND LYRES
Utopian Geography Within the Space of the Global World

Tsarskoje Selo is considered not as the subtext of the Petersburg text, and as a utopia of the City, rationally mastered space, and the Garden utopia, but rather as total harmony between the individual and his environment. The educational Tsarskoje Selo utopia corresponds with the "liberal utopia" of American philosopher, Richard Rorty. Later, the creative "return" of Ahmatova to Tsarskoje Selo is treated as a return to the Fatherland of heroic personal identity, exemplary both for the military man, and for the "peacetime" of chaotic postmodernist entropy.

Key words: anacreontic, utopia, imperial modernization, deconstruction of the horseman, a considerably-democratic society

References

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Sergey KROPOTOV

Russia, Ekaterinburg.
Ekaterinburg Academy of Contemporary Art.
Rector, PhD.

Allegories in the Era of Economimesis: On the Origins of the Non-panoptical Iconography of Street Art

Drawing on the example of local street-art practices, the article examines the link between modern street art and environmental art, especially in regards to the multi-layered character of their texts. Modern street-art practices turn urban spaces into palimpsests and allegories of a sort, as artists adopt and revamp formerly idle and symbolically empty sites. The article examines the ability of street-art practices to turn solid and stable urban landscapes into fluid and flexible spaces — the common trait also linking street art and environmental art. Finally, the ability of street artists to transform the rigid urban terrain is perceived as an indication of major socioeconomic transformation — from the industrial model of the Soviet type to the flexible post-industrial model of new Russian capitalism.

Key words: street art, land art, urban studies, allegory, palimpsest, hybridization of the textual and the visual

References

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Dennis SOBOLEV

Israel, Haifa.
Haifa Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature,
University of Haifa. Professor.

"Topophilia": Cultural Geography as a Genre of Contemporary Fiction

The paper aims to analyze the representation of space in a considerable part of modern fiction. It demonstrates the gradual emergence of a new mode of fiction, which focuses upon the existential space in its geographical and historical concreteness, and assumes the representation of space to be one of the most significant literary goals. This mode of fiction, especially palpable in contemporary literature, is labeled "the novel of place" — or, in broader terms, "topophilic" prose. As a starting point, the paper analyzes several contemporary Hebrew novels, which are characterized by this type of representation, and in which the role of the plot becomes rather subsidiary. The second section addresses the theoretical significance of this problem, as well as the problem of genres in general, for contemporary research in comparative literature. The third and the fourth sections turn to the genealogy of "topophilic fiction" as a genre and compare it to the so-called "travel literature." The history of these genres, however, turns out to be entirely different. Whereas travel literature is one of the oldest literary modes, "topophilic fiction" emerges only in the mid-nineteenth century. Although the paper traces its earlier roots, it also shows that a very significant change in the very "episteme" of the literary perception and representation of space was necessary, in order to allow for the emergence of this new genre. In the fifth section, this analysis is followed by a comparison between the abstract "post-modern" fiction of the 1960s and 1970s, and the hyper-concrete "novel of place," which emerges in the wake of post-modernism. Drawing upon the examples discussed in the previous sections, the sixth section summarizes several major characteristics of "the novel of place" and addresses a few central problems associated with its study. Finally, the seventh section turns to concordant developments in literary theory, the philosophy of space and contemporary "new" cultural geography, and contrasts the essentialist approach to space, characteristic of existentialism, to the non-essentialist theories of space as a cultural construction. It concludes that these assumed "philosophies of space" is another theme that must be addressed by an in-depth analysis of "topophilic fiction."

Key words: literature, cultural geography, representation of space, "the novel of place," "topophilic fiction," problem of genres, crisis of comparative literature, genealogy of genre, travel literature, change of episteme, particularity, urban landscapes, existential environment, production of space

References

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Dmitry ZAMYATIN

Russia, Moskow.
Russian Institute for cultural and natural heritage (Moscow).
Leader of Center of human space researches, PhD.

Space and Genius

This article examines the peculiarities and conformity of the natural laws of the geographic imagination as it relates to empirical space. In the meta-geographical context, the mental interaction of the place and genius, for example in Alexander Sokurov's film "The Eclipse Days", are studied. The influence of the empirical landscape on the shaping of individual geographical images, are discussed. The main space representations are interpreted through post-colonial and exotism theories.

Key words: meta-geography, empire, place, landscape, phenomena, identity, local myth, space representations, geographical image, genius

References

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Andrey MAKARYCHEV

Germany, Berlin.
OstEuropa Institut, Frei Universitat Berlin.
PhD, professor.

Identity Esthetics: Geographical Images in Cinema Narratives

In this paper, the author argues that different cinematographic discourses can be instrumental in the cultural process of identity-making in many former USSR countriesand ex-socialist regions of Eastern Europe. The author demonstrates the influence of cinematic images and storylines on shaping local and regional identities. He argues that, despite its seeming non-political form, the language of cinema is, in fact, deeply political, since it raises and debates issues such as power and resistance, the mainstreamand the periphery, threats and security, etc.

Key words: regional identity, cultural narratives, popular geopolitics

References

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Aminad MAGAMEDOVA

Russia, St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg Branch of the Russian Institute for Cultural Research.
Head of Department. PhD in philosophy.

Cultural History of Symbolic Forms: The Genesis of Daghestan Ornament

This article deals with the historical circumstances of the cultural genesis of Daghestan ornament. The text shows the transformation of meanings and symbols of the visual world, depending on the dominant point of view of the local ethnoses.

Key words: ornament, geometrical ornament, point of view, mentality, religion

References

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Irina SOKOLOVA

Russia, St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg Branch of the Russian Institute for Cultural Research.
Seniour Rearcher. PhD.

Kōans of Contemporary Art
Some Thoughts on the Book by Marina Perchikhina, "Reading the White Wall"

This book, written by Marina Perchikhina, includes a number of related and separate stories and is a unique and valuable project in its own right. "Reading the White Wall" is a kind of philosophy of life, and a prism through which one can see new perspectives of contemporary Russian art in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Key words: Marina Perchikhina, Andrei Blagov, theater, performance, conceptual art, contemporary art, commentary, visuality, video-art, land-art

References

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Maria YAKOVLEVA

Russia, St. Petersburg.
Herzen State Pedagogical University. Department of theory and history of culture.
PhD in cultural research, senior lecturer.

Text as a Spase of Initiation
Review of the Book "Literature and Rite de Passage" by Lyubov Bugaeva

This book, written by Lyubov Bugaeva, is not simply dedicated to various rites of passage and their literary versions, but is itself a kind of labyrinth, urging the reader to pass from one hermeneutic strategy to another. As a result, it serves as an illustration of a conceptual metaphor, which is "a mapping of the source and the target domain". Subtlety and depth of some dimensions of the rite of passage allows us to perceive the book's text as a discrete structure, every part of which has its own value. The fragments, though separate, together with its complexly intertwined subject matter, create a single field of tension where the reader can follow the author only with difficulty, while both overcoming the gaps and emphasizing them.In my opinion, it is of great importance for a book to remain open and, in a sense, incomplete. This offers the possibility of discovering extra dimensions relating to rites of passage that lurk on the borders of various texts and their interpretations.

Key words: rite de passage, discourse, initiation, labyrinth, metaphor, transgression

References

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Mikhail STEPANOV

Russia, St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg Branch of the Russian Institute for Cultural Research.
St. Petersburg State University. Faculty of Philosophy. The center of mediaphilosophy. Scientist

10 ++/ 0 //"Taking Action//"
Review of the Book "10 ++ Program Texts for Possible Worlds" by Peter Weibel

Is art the practice of freedom? What is contemporary art in the media age? Is digital art a symptom of something? What is Beauty? Is there any chance of survival for the art of analog (classicism)? In this book review, curator, artist, researcher and art theorist, Peter Weibel, attempts to answer these and other questions.

Key words: contemporary art, media, media art, digital, nature, society, freedom

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