INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CULTURAL RESEARCH

Vladimir KAGANSKIY

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

The Russian Cultural Landscape as an Empire Landscape

A general concept of cultural landscape as applied to modern Russia civilization is based on the theory of geography and a traveler`s experience. The core items of the essay are spatial forms and the semantics of a landscape. The correspondence between concepts of "landscape" and "empire" is discussed. The influence of "the Byzantine heritage" in cultural landscape structure is revealed. The conclusion is that the modern Russian Federation's spatial structure and landscape are of an empirical type.

Key words: state, empire, cultural landscape, landscape, space, travel, the Russian Federation, Russia, theoretical geography

References

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Mikhail SVERDLOV

Russia, Saint Petersburg.
Institute of History in Saint Petersburg. Chief Research Worker.
PhD in History, Professor.

Imperial Ambitions in the Early Medieval States
Poland and Russia in 10th and 11th Centuries

In the early European Middle Ages, there was a constant tendency towards the formation of empires. This consisted of including in early medieval states neighboring countries and tribes, including other ethnic peoples, a superior power, suzerainty over them, while maintaining their self-government and court. The best examples of these kinds of empires are the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne, the First Bulgarian Tsardom, and the Holy Roman Empire of Otto I from the Saxon Dynasty (962). There were other such imperial tendencies in the early history of Poland and Russia as well. There were the main state institutions in Poland and Russia in the 10th century and the first quarter of the 11th century: 1) the princes' dynasties of Piasts and Rurikids as the highest institutes of public power and their hierarchical social, political and military structures of service men; 2) the law; 3) territorial division; 4) the system of taxation and duties of free non-privileged populations; and 5) volunteer corps. In this period, Poland and Russia subdued different neighboring countries and tribes. In addition, the Polish Prince Boleslav the Brave tried to subjugate the Czechs (1003–1004) and Russia by making use of his dynastical alliances. After the death of Boleslav the Brave, the political relations of Poland and Russia became regular for two medieval States. Periods of confrontations changed over time through princes' political and dynastical alliances. The Russian princes Vladimir Sviatoslavich and his son Jaroslav the Wise used byzantine imperial symbols to demonstrate sovereignty and the potency of their power.

Key words: imperial tendencies, subjugation, suzerainty, state institutes, princes' political and dynastical alliances, symbols of sovereignty and potency of princes' power

References

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Ryszard NYCZ

Poland, Cracow.
Prof. dr hab., Department of Literary Anthropology and Cultural Studies.
Faculty of Polish Studies Uniwersytet Jagielloński, full professor.

New Dictionaries: Old problems? Other questions: New Answers?
Polish and Russian Discourses of Memory within a New Humanities Perspective

The aim of the article is to identify basic conditions for the emergence of a space of genuinely open dispute, negotiation, dialogue, various discourses of memory, and formulas of community identities. Firstly, I suppose that it is indispensible to include a contemporary experience of human temporality, which today has truly become an empire of memory itself. Below, I propose a slightly more precise delimitation: the experience of the present time as post-past. However, a memory of an empire — the second element of the congress's theme — comprehended as a determination of a research profile of the area, is in my view a third part of truth at best. Secondly, to fulfill its task, post-imperial studies have to be strictly correlated with at least two other orientations — post-colonial studies and post-dependence studies. A creation of a conceptual space for an effective intercultural dialogue about such a "sensitive" topic as self-knowledge of the national community, emerging from traumatic experiences, relations of domination and subordinance, a meeting of the politics of memory — is another important introductory goal. Therefore, I propose, thirdly, some suggestions that relate to heading towards a shift of stresses in comprehending an individual identity and an identity of a community; this seems to lead to yet more auspicious views on the further constructive capabilities of this dialogue.

Key words: the present time as post-past, post-colonial studies, post-dependence studies, post-imperial studies, exotopy

References

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Alexander GOVORUNOV
Oksana KUZMENKO

Russia, St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg State University, Faculty of Philosophy.
Associate Professor / Postgraduate Student.

Orientalism and a Right to Speak for an Other

This article deals with E. Said's concept of Orientalism, as well as its reception in Russian cultural and historical studies. The position of Orientalism is connected with a general reproach, which states that the entire Western Orientalist tradition is a tendentious one. Orientalism represents the Orient in a manner that justifies Western dominance over the Orient (as well as the whole non-Western world). E. Said formulates several methodological criticisms regarding Western tradition as it represents the Far East. These include: the use of summative generalizations, ahistorism, textuality, stereotypes about the irrational "Eastern man" and the "lazy native", compared with the active and rational epistemological and political position of "Western man". This line is continued in another important work by E. Said: "Culture and Imperialism". On the whole, these claims are quite compatible with the self-criticism of Western methodology in regard to cultural and historical studies. The reception of the concept of Orientalism was dramatically contradictory – ranging from either enthusiastic approval and (at times, excessively) wide usage or total negation, regarding the concept as factually wrong and ideologically tendentious. However, this polarity in reception highlights some actual methodological problems, revealed by E. Said –with no final resolution. These include the problem of epistemological strategies, which are necessary to achieve an adequate image of the culture of the Other. The main point is: Re-presentation as a secondary entity. Is it possible to achieve an adequate (self-) presentation of another's culture along with its re-presentation? As a conceptual basis for such a task, we propose using the phenomenology of E. Husserl's Cartesian Meditations V, in which the experience of the Other is relegated (and restricted) to the alter ego.

Key words: orientalism, East, West, imperialism, the Other, representation

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, Seniour Lecturer.

Empire as a Donor: Moral Exploitation as the Basis of Russian Civilization

The author considers the specifics of the Russian Empire as a phenomenon of human, mass self-organization in its moral dimensions. The concept of the "Man of Empire" is proposed as a definition of some existential typos of the actors of history. The historical roots of the Russian national character are investigated here as a basis of the Russian typos of the "Man of Empire". The concept of "Empire as a donor" is proposed for a metaphoric specification of this typos of the State.

Key words: empire, Russian, moral, civilization, actor, donor

References

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Lev YAKOVLEV

Russia, Saratov.
Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of Russia.
Volga Institute of Management named after P. A. Stolypin.

An Imperial Temptation

The imperial idea conceptualized today as the possible basis of a national ideology. This is due to the historical and cultural dynamics of the identity of Russian society. As Russian statehood, over the centuries, evolved as an empire, discourses about national identity were constructed around messianic ideas. In the discourse of the Russian imperial idea, P. Krusanov's "Angel Bite" acts as a significant lens that focused its perspective on the issue. This text is a kind of response to the interpretation of imperial practices, as a rational organization of political space. In fact, the empire create its own models of rationality, values, and criteria for the evaluation of social interactions and cultural forms. Not only does post-modern deconstruction destroy the absolute justification and superhuman values of the empire or merely criticize the imperial principle. it goes beyond the democratic idea, nationalism and the doctrine of human rights, but also the understanding practices of individual and collective life in imperial spaces. At the same time, the Krusanov text goes beyond the post-modern approach, offering an interpretation of imperial practices, such as generating not only a rigid hierarchy, but also the paths of chaos.

Key words: the idea of empire, sociocultural space, political space, cultural style, self-identification, postmodernism, vital meanings, chaos

References

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Dina KARAVAEVA (FEDOROVA)

Russia, Ekaterinburg.
Institute of History and Archaeology
(Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Science).
PhD Student, junior researcher in Ethnohistory department.

Englishness and Empire: Identity Discourse in the Contemporary UK

The intellectual climate at the turn of the centuries in many former empires, including Russia and the UK, could be described as the crisis of the post-imperial national identity, when society was "boiling" with all kinds of theories about ethnic/national identities, image projects, etc. In the UK, these processes were further complicated by a lack of understanding — both by the general public and the politicians about what was, or should have been, the content of the notion of British-ness, and about the proportionate share of Englishness in such a concept. The discourse revealed the existence of two different positions with regard to the definition of a community — by criteria of legal nationality or ethnicity. This, in its turn, reflected two historical trends: the evolution of the civil nation in the UK and the actualization of ethnic nations on the basis of existing or assumed ethnic differences — against the background of a latent ban on the nationalism of the "title nation". The author refers to the analysis of the social and historical context against the background of which the discussions among the historians, politicians, economists, representatives of literary and cinematographic circles took place.
The article is devoted to the contemporary identity debates in Britain about content and strategies of the British-ness (and the main part of it, which is Englishness) theme in cohesion with the role and importance of the imperial past. The focus was on some specific concepts of Englishness (Little England), multiculturalism, football hooliganism problems, etc.
Following the imperial past, British society finds itself searching for a new identity. This search is accompanied by the creation of various memory structures that manage to turn the past into a veritable lighthouse of origin in an ocean of ideas, projects and strategies. The British Empire, "where the Sun never sets", and the famous Pax Britanica wasn't merely a source of wealth for the British. The Empire was an embodiment of grandeur and might; it constituted an important part of the national identity. Its downfall resulted in the emergence of specific commemorative practices that are very intrinsic in the cultural, political and economic life of the society. The relationships between the empire, imperialism, and British identity are very controversial today: on the one hand, the empire is a nostalgic memory of British-ness and Englishness, but on the other hand, it is a symbol of contradictions and collisions between the nations that constitute British society today.
History has always been especially productive at creating national myths. National histories are, to a certain extent, stories about the process in which nations form perceptions about themselves as individual subjects. In this sense, the "nations-are-created-by-historians" aphorism holds true. Empire without the institution of the monarchy wouldn't mean much to the British. The queen and the monarchy were symbols of the empire. The search for national identity in Great Britain is not limited, however, to the juxtaposition of the ethnic groups that have long populated the British Isles. The proper context in which to view this identity was the entire empire with all other peoples who populated it.
Special attention is given to the subject of the Little England concept of English Identity, an identity of those who would turn their backs on overseas adventures. There have been versions of Little England for as long as there have been imperialists, but it is not past foreign entanglements that exercise little Englanders, but present ones — especially the current European Union. However, in spite of the controversy of the re-evaluation of the imperial past, the empire remains some sort of ethnic El Dorado (with its success of global, multicultural and multi-ethnic ideas), at least for the English part of the population. However, contemporary British people are moving themselves further and further away from the time of the empire. Today, they are more inclined towards a different kind of multi-culture, localization, and existential isolation

Key words: British Empire, modern Britain, England, Englishness, British-ness, national/ethnic identity, multiculturalism, the "Little England" concept

References

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Alexander LYUSY

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

Imperiokrititsizm: Memory of the Genre, or The Goal in the Own Gate

Proceeding from the idea of Hardt and Negry that the empire represents not only the comprehensive spatial order directed at the elimination of any borders, but also a certain form of the organization of time, such as breaks of history and memory fixing, the author disputes the idea of the hopelessness of the Russia in regard to the empire. The article shows that the empire here — historically predetermined, but not eternal structure of the power. After all imperial, and then imperial forms, having played the historical role, weren't so characteristic for east Slavs before the tataro-mongolian invasion. The culture of genre thinking provides game to some extent «imperial» genres. On a concrete historical and literary material it is shown that Alexander Pushkin's formula «Istanbul will crush, but not such is Arzrum», didn't lose an urgency for understanding of modern events in the Islamic world and finally represents a general formula of imperial destiny. The izmorfizm of disciplinary and political imperialism locates. As the situational network empire is presented an European championship configuration on football of 2012 in which there lives memory of the imperial and contractual period of existence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Poland — Ukraine). Whereas the sports and raw imperialism of new Russia is realized in carrying out the World Cup of 2018 autocratically, at the same time having chance for the first time to carry out competitions at once both in Europe, and in Asia that creates concrete internally dialogical Euroasian tension.

Key words: great narrative, disciplinary imperialism, the Euroasian tension, post-colonialism, forms of socio-bio-power, deficiency of images, totality, coercion to post-colonialism

References

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Vladimir KONEV

Russia, Samara.
Samara State University. The Department of philosophy of humanitarian faculties.
Head of the Department. PhD in philosophy, professor.

The Three Assumptions of the Philosophy of Value

In this article, the author presents some assumptions about the philosophy of value. The foundation of value is rooted in the autochthonous meaning of culture, broken down into three assumptions: the ability to distinguish the valuable from the invaluable; understand that the nature of value is temporal, i.e. value translates the 'this now' into the 'universal', into the 'eternal'; and finally that the definite 'this' man is responsible for the universality of value.

Key words: culture, philosophy of values, axiology, value, autochthonous meanings of culture, cultural forms, time, the individual

References

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Konstantin SHEVTSOV

St. Petersburg, Russia.
St. Petersburg State University, Faculty of Philosophy.
PhD, Senior Lecturer, Fellow of the center of mediaphilosophy.

Imaginary past: On Memory and Categorization of the Past

The paper analyzes methods of philosophical conceptualization of the past as one of the temporal modes. There are three main methods: 1) representation of the past as part of a time sequence, prior to present one; this allows us to give the past the reality of the external borders of the present and subordinate the past to the established symbolic order; 2) understanding the past as it is imagined, as a phantasm or a dream that can invade Today. In this case, the past eludes symbolization, and its reality is determined by the fact that the subject belongs to the memory of the past to a greater extent than the present; and 3) the presence of the past as a factual experience of the irreversibility of existence, whether it be the experience of death, debt, guilt or faith. The article notes that there are alternatives to the philosophical conceptualization of the past in the practice of preserving relics of the past in museums, archives, and in a variety of media, because the past has a way of preserving its own self-existence, and is, to some extent, independent of the present.

Key words: past, memory, sequencing, symbolic order, duty, imaginary, dream, trauma, irreversibility, subject of memory, re-sentiment, violence, mnemonics

References

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Norval BAITELLO JUNIOR

Brazil, São Paulo.
Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). Professor, Dr.

Sitting Thinking

The human body: is it related to thought, its location, and the physical condition of activity? If the sleep of reason produces monsters, what gives rise to the sedentary thought? What happens to the human mind and body in the present situation, when the civilization of practice requires the human to spend a lot time sitting on chairs: at table, in cars, on public transportation, etc., and when the medialisation of modern life requires stillness when watching the screen, etc.? In the history of philosophy and culture, we can find many interesting observations about the relationship of thought and activity of the body, depending on the environment of thought and body position. In the representation of the book by Brazilian philosopher of culture and media researcher, Professor Norval Baitello Junior's essay attempts to critique and outline the genealogy of this cultural situation. The author proposes an experiment — to practice in a different way, to think differently than in the scientific tradition; namely, to think on the move, whilst turning somersaults and making pirouettes. In this way, we gain the ability to methodically and in a discriminating way, think genuine and non-genuine thoughts.

Key words: sitting thinking, the body thinking, the body, movement, media, media theory

References

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Anton DENIKIN

Russia, Moskow.
M. A. Litovchin Institute of TV and Broadcasting for the Humanities.
PhD. Associate Professor.

Video Games: is it Art?

The article analyzes the issue of the status of video games in modern culture and art and concludes that a video game can be used as art. However, video games are broader than art, surpassing it as regards the speed and availability of communications, audience coverage, their selectivity and applicability. Video games — a convenient form of training, action, manifestations of human capabilities, are fast becoming the new paradigm of human culture of the 21st century.

Key words: video games, art, entertainment, kitsch, culture, communication

References

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Denis VIREN

Russia, Moskow.
State Institute of Art Sciences.
Film Studies Department. Postgraduate student.
Film expert at Polish Institute in Moscow.

Realist Canon in the Polish Cinema of the 1970s–1980s

The article shows how artistic means were instrumental for the "deconstruction of the new cinematic language" (in the words of the critic Katarzyna Monka-Malatyńska), which was occurring in the Polish cinema of the 1970s. The best representative of this tendency was the filmmaker Wojciech Wiszniewski. Using the methods of socialist realist documentary (especially the film "Wanda Gościmińska, a Textile Worker" («Wanda Gościmińska, włokniarka»)), he turned the ideals of the era upside-down: the front-rank workers appeared to the viewers, as if frozen within the slogans of the past, as the dead "men of marble". In this way, the destruction of the canon occurred at the level of film language.
During the same period, a parody movement was born, which made fun of the typical way of life during socialism. In 1970, Marek Piwowski made "A Trip Down the River" («Rejs») — a paradocumentary comedy, where pervasive ceremonial meetings and public celebrations became the object of ridicule. The fact of this film's appearance is in line with the development of the Polish avant-garde art, which existed at the cross-roads of aesthetics and politics. Unsurprisingly, the film avant-gardist Grzegorz Królikiewicz used actors from the street theater of the "Academy of Movement" («Akademia Ruchu») in his short film "Precursor" («Prekursor»). This film, made in 1988, at the turn of an era, successfully combined the destruction of socialist realist techniques with parody.

Key words: polish cinema, Socialist Realist canon, avant-garde, Wojciech Wiszniewski, Grzegorz Królikiewicz, Marek Piwowski, "Academy of Movement", cinema of moral anxiety, parody

References

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Andrey FOMENKO

Russia, St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Institute of Cultural Research. PhD,
seniour rearcher.

Historical Anthropology — Paolo and Vittorio Taviani

In their early films, the Italian filmmakers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani explored the mechanisms of historical process and particularly the confrontation between the tribe as a collective identity and the individual who stood apart from it. This conception underlies "Allonsanfan" — the most outstanding film by the Taviani brothers.

Key words: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Allonsanfan, liberation movement, historical conception, cinema of Italy

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Artur PISKORZ

Poland, Cracow.
Pedagogical University of Cracow
Chair of European and American History and Culture. PhD in Philosophy.

Jack In Wonderland
Temporal, Spatial and Mental Labyrinths in Stanley Kubrick's the Shining

In 1980, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, the adaptation of Stephen King's novel, opened in cinemas. The book and the film tell a story of Jack Torrance — an aspiring writer gone mad. Generically a horror movie, The Shining can be read in a number of ways. Leaving aside other possible readings, the text investigates the construction of multiple mazelike structures on temporal, spatial and mental levels. The film narrative sets out on a journey through these layers; effectively "sucking in" the filmic characters (and the audience) into the "wonderland" of evil twins, doubles and madness where, eventually, nothing is what it seems.

Key words: Stanley Kubrick, horror movie, mazelike structures

References

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Konstantin OCHERETYANY

Russia, St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg State University, Faculty of Philosophy.
Department of Ontology and Theory of Knowledge.
Postgraduate Student.

The Twilight of Pervasive Clarity

The review focuses on Valery Savchuk's last book — "Mediaphilosophy — Rush of the Reality".

Key words: mediaphilosophy, mediareality, web, local instances

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Rodion SAVINOV

Russia, Saint-Petersburg.
Russian Christian Academy for the Humanities.
PhD.

Memoria Reformata: What we Knew about Luther and did not have to Forget

The presented review describes both the general content of the book and its importance for the Russian reader. The current collection is compared with the previous edition, and analyzes the Introduction, the main body of the texts, and all supplements. The specificity of this publication and its importance for the sciences of religion and culture is examined. The significance of some problematic texts and the importance of realization of proposed research programs is also discussed.

Key words: Luther, the Reformation, Protestantism, the Middle Ages, Modernism, Germany, theology, philosophy, Europe, Russia

References

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