INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CULTURAL RESEARCH

Valery SAVCHUK

St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia
Institute of Philosophy, Professor of the Department of Culturology, Philosophy of Culture and Aesthetics
Head of the Center for Media Philosophy
Doctor of Science in Philosophy

The Victim of the Present Time

Sacrifice is a condition of culture. However, today, on the one hand, one can not ignore the question of theorists: is there a sacrifice in the present tense? On the other hand, one can not but pay attention to the phenomenon of the "battle for sacrifice", conducted by various countries, societies, social groups, individuals. Add to this the frequency of the word "victim" in the media. The path to a meaningful understanding of the victim is one of the most important tasks of our time. The meaningfulness of the victim contradicts the tradition of considering it a consequence of an accident. Pragmatism and rationality is an obstacle to understanding the symbolic content of the victim. A victim if she is real is always symbolic.

Key words: sacrifice, sacrifice, culture, chance, symbol.

References

Sergey ZENKIN

Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow; Higher School of Economics, St.Petersburg, Russia
Professor, Doctor of Science in Philology

Poetry and the Sacrifice of Words

Poetry is "a sacrifice in which words are the victims". This idea from Georges Bataille's book "The Inner experience", insufficiently understood in criticism and not accepted by aesthetical theory, is commented in the present article. The following questions are examined: the specificity of sacrifice in the general process of creative negativity; the possibility of sacrificing a word, i.e. a purely informational object, a set of virtual relationships; the eventual meaning that the total act of "sacrificing words" can express by abolishing the particular meanings of those words. The critical analysis tends to precise the epistemological presuppositions of Bataille's idea and to introduce some restrictive conditions under which this idea might be utilized in the scholarly discourse on literature.

Key words: sacrifice, Georges Bataille, aesthetics, theory of literature.

References

Marina KORETSKAYA

Samara Academy for the Humanities, Samara, Russia
Philosophy Department, PhD in Philosophy, Associate Professor

Trauma as an Assembling Point of Biopolitical Collective Body

The article attempts to describe the specific of the victim's figure in contemporary culture. As it was in archaic societies, present-day victim still induces a powerful social affect, through which communities can to experience themselves as a collective body. However, modernity could be characterized by the fact, that in everyday speech and cultural space in general the sacred victim is replaced by the victim-sufferer, as well as by a clearly expressed habit of talking about the victim in the logic of the trauma narrative. The article analyzes the theory of the cultural trauma by Jeffrey Alexander and provides arguments that the trauma is a biopolitical concept, which gives a compromise between the current biopolitical ethics (that affirms the absolute sanctity of life) and the basis of biopolitics related to the reproduction of the radical violence victim figure (so-called bare life). The internal request of the social system for the reproduction and demonstration of the victimized bare life takes the form of a sacred evil, a catastrophe that causes collective horror and grief, but is repeated here and there.

Key words: victim, sacrifice, cultural trauma, discourse of trauma, bare life, biopolitics, collective body, identity, sacred-evil.

References

Elena IVANENKO

Samara Academy for the Humanities, Samara, Russia
Philosophy Department, Аssociate Professor
Head of the project "Philosophy in the Net" (www.filosofiavseti.ru)
Editor of the Project "Philosophical Samara" (www.phil63.ru)

Well-Designed Victim

The article is devoted to the analysis of the victim as a media construct in the space of biopolitics. It is suggested to look at the transformation of the mechanics of the sacrifice and victim in modern media. Following J. Alexander, who proposed to distinguish the event from trauma as a result of collective perception, the article proposes to see in the victim the result of collective activity in designing the anthropological characteristics of the victim. This activity understood as network design. Thus, the key concept of the article - the design of the victim - expresses simultaneously the process and result of the activity of the networked communities. Network displacement of functions between the donator, sacrificer and acceptor is analyzed using the concept produsage . Produsage expresses the idea that any user produces what can be used by others in accordance with their requests. The identity of the sacrifice to its design is problematized. The article provides a brief overview of techniques for creating a well-designed victim as a media product. The demand of the victim as a commodity makes it possible to speak of an understanding of the victim as an economic unit. As an effective mechanics of interaction with traumatic experience, the article deals with a specific communicative phenomenon - hype . As a special type of collective communication outside of speech, hype allows you to involve and hold in the framework of biopolitical ethics tabooed "nuda vita".

Key words: media distance, victim, cultural trauma, nuda vita, biopolitics, design, network communication, hype, collective identity, economy of the victim.

References

Tatiana KAZARINA

Samara National Research University, Samara, Russia
Department of Russian and Foreign Literature and Public Relations
Doctor of Science in Philology, Professor

New Faces of Violence: Snuff as a Product of Glamour

The article focuses on the emergence in literature of the last decade a new metaphor of "snuff", gives analysis of its semantic features, and considers variants of its use in the novels Linor Goralik and Sergey Kuznetsov's "No," Chuck Palahniuk "Snuff" and Viktor Pelevin's "S. N. A. F. F.". According to the author, due to snuff - video recording of a real death and physical pain - the philosophy of consumption and life success expands the scope of its authority, including in it not only something that inspires joy, but what causes fear. Snuff is able to bind the community in apophatic way, proving its invulnerability, but can not protect it from injections of reality, destructive for the world of illusions. The proposed comparison of this Pelevin's novel with the works of Vladimir Sorokin allows to verify the significance of the topic of violence for the whole modern literature.

Key words: the philosophy of consumption, snuff, glam-capitalism, imaging, archaic rituals, glamour, victim, fractal structure, metaphor.

References

Daniil ANIKIN

Saratov State University, Saratov, Russia
Associate Professor of Theoretical and Social Philosophy Department
PhD in Philosophy, Associate Professor

Image of the Victim in the History: Strategy of Cultural Representation and Competition of Narratives

In article the functional methodology of studying of the victims in the theory of culture is analyzed. The author allocates three main representatives of this methodology - E. Durkheim, M. Enaff, D. Alexander. Durkheim reveals the social nature and orientation of the victim on strengthening of collective solidarity. Enaff builds the communicative structure of a sacrifice consisting of three main components - responsible, the victim and the addressee of a sacrifice as whom the community acts. Alexander for the first time correlates the individual victim to a collective trauma. He focuses attention that emergence of an image of the victim can be removed from the event for years or even decades. Therefore it is necessary to speak about process of a traumatization of the past within which victimization allows to provide emotional empathy and participation of representatives of community in the general past. On the example of cultural designing of a sacrificial act of Ivan Susanin the author shows stages of process of a traumatization and also analyzes mechanisms of symbolical fight between the separate cultural narrative (patrimonial and regional) trying to privatize the victim and to include it in own local history. These narratives not just join in the official narration about Ivan Susanin, and show a certain independence and ability to symbolically recode separate elements of the sacrificial myth.

Key words: victim, cultural trauma, representation, wine, myth, symbolical competition, narrative, media, culture.

References

Marina MIKHAILOVA

Russian Christian Academy of Humanities, St. Petersburg, Russia
Doctor of Science in Philosophy, Associate Professor

Sacrifice, Forgiveness, Gift: Anthropos between Victimization and Freedom

The article deals with the problem of transformation of a victim into a sacrifice as a free gift, brought for the life of the world. In the Russian language picture of the world a word "жертва" means 1) nutrition, 2) victim, 3) sacrifice. The nutrition is neutral, it is only a fact of food chains. The victim is rather negative. After the encounter with evil, which takes the form of faceless fate or incarnates in a malefactor, the victim feels pain, anger and resentment. The violence is perceived as a wound in the body of the world. Finally, the sacrifice is positive. In polytheistic religions, it is aimed at increasing the common good, and therefore the suffering associated with it becomes a source of catharsis. In the Abrahamic monotheistic religions, the sacrifice is the unselfish bringing to the beloved of the most precious, revealing the beauty of the world. The ultimate and perfect sacrifice is Jesus Christ, who gives himself to death for the life of the world. Through this sacrifice, once brought forever and for everybody, the gift of liberation from sin and death is offered to every person. A victim can act differently. He can repress the incident, and then an ignored injury will destroy him. He can struggle and claim retribution, thereby launching the mechanism of infinite evil and strengthening himself in the status of the victim. He can forgive and thereby put a "new beginning" (H. Arendt), freely establishing relationships that will be determined not by an overpast crime, but by trust and love. Forgiveness exists as a gift, because it is an act of the free will of the victim and is not predetermined by previous events. One of the conditions of forgiveness is the acceptance by the personality of the suffering as a gift (trial, unique destiny). The personal acceptance of the life as a gift leads into eucharistic (thankful) relations with the world. Forgiveness is regarded as an expression of this attitude at the level of deed. This is a strong position, because a victim becomes an author, an active figure, establishing a new reality. It is important to note that such a transition from victim to sacrifice is possible for any person, because the anthropological roots of forgiveness are deeper than the cultural and religious levels of structuring the individual. The poetry of I. Brodsky with strong themes of sacrifice, forgiveness and gratitude in it proves the possibility of transition from victimization to freedom.

Key words: sacrifice, victim, gift, forgiveness, freedom.

References

Maria PROROKOVA

Institute of Philosophy Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, Russia
Department of Analytic Anthropology
Junior Research Fellow

Genealogy of the Image of "Alien/Stranger" in René Girard's Concept of Persecution

The article is devoted to the philosophical and anthropological categories of mimetic rivalry, sacrifice and the mechanism of persecution - in the manner in which these categories were considered by French philosopher René Girard when creating his project of fundamental anthropology. Applying Girard's method of exploring the mythopoetic tradition as the most valuable material for study, authors of this article have drawn a parallel between the narrative construction of duel between the Hero and the Monster in European cultural tradition and in the dialectics of persecutory logic, which is, according to Girard's assumption, the key to the problem of genesis of cultural institutions in human society. In this article, we consistently consider the Monster figure as a symbolic rethinking of the image of Alien, Alienness and exclusion from the profane demystified world of the community and the figure of the Hero / King as an intermediary between the sacred and profane worlds. A separate goal was to fix diffusive shifts in the contexture of social, the movements of figures of the Beast and Hero as two disaggregated aspects of the sacral.

Key words: victimization, exclusion, stranger, sacrifice, mimetic rivalry, anthropology, culture, sacred, dialectics, violence.

References

Yuriy RAZINOV

Samara National Research University, Samara, Russia
Department of Philosophy
Doctor of Science in Philosophy, Professor

Darya SHEKHOVTSEVA

Samara National Research University, Samara, Russia
Department of Philosophy
Postgraduate Student

Desire and Sacrifice

The notion of sacrifice in context of consumer society is discussed and, as a result, sacrificial attitude is shown to be internally contradictory. The problem of sacrifice is thematized from the desire aspect. The sacrifice is understood as desire sacrifice and, accordingly, ascetic and hedonistic traditions of "desire cultivation" are analyzed. Internal contradictions of both strategies are revealed.
A metaphor of "long will people" is introduced on the basis of patience phenomenon and "patient" desire is opposed to "impatient" one.
Libidinal economy is considered as compared to economics of capitalism. .

Key words: sacrifice, desire, patience, ascesis, long will, hedonism, capitalism.

References

Ilya ALENEVSKY

St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia
Department of Culturology, Philosophy of Culture and Aesthetics
Postgraduate Student

The Phenomenology of Self-Sacrifice in the Political and Creative Enthusiasm

The subject of research is the notion of victim, which is the most contradictory ways rooted in our lives. Endless information about the victims revolves around the ongoing in the society of violence. News and emergencies demonstrate all the new victims of disasters of nature, criminality, terrorism. We - an unwitting victim of the information society. Items lost the understanding of victims can be found in the idea and ritual of sacrifice that distinguishes many of the traditions. In opposition to the violence, the victim becomes a critical concept. The sacrifice reveals the phenomenon of victim. The relevance of the study is to revive the meaning of sacrifice, which should be linked to the phenomenon of self-sacrifice. It is characterized by a state of enthusiasm. The will to self-sacrifice in selfless devotion reveals the phenomenon of the victim as such. The conclusion of this research is to introduce the concept of the victim as highest devotion. The research is supported by examples of political and creative enthusiasm.

Key words: will, victim, violence, criticism, self-sacrifice, existence, energy, voltage, devotion, selfless devotion, enthusiasm.

References

Andrei SERIKOV

Samara Academy for the Humanities, Samara, Russia
Chair of Humanities and Sciences
PhD in Philosophy, Associate Professor

Meanings of Self-Sacrifice and its Prototypes in Traditional Culture

Examples of self-sacrifice from Russian National Corpus were taken in order to get the main meanings of self-sacrifice in Russian culture. There is a family resemblance between them, some of them being typical self-sacrifice, other being just metaphorical. The most prototypical are the cases when somebody not just symbolically but really gives his/her own life for the sake of other people, in the name of religious or moral principles. According to mythological, historical and a anthropological data, that is the ritual suicides that are prototypes of self-sacrifice. Ethical view is that moral values are the reasons of self-sacrifice, that one sacrifices because believe in the values. But anthropologically and sociologically it is the ritual that generates and renews the values. When somebody is in the situation of self-sacrificing and sacrifices his/her life, surviving ritual participants retain the experience of self-sacrifice and related values being real.

Key words:sacrifice, self-sacrifice, ritual, ritual suicide, corpus linguistic, family resemblance, prototypical meanings, social situation.

References

Elena BOLOTNIKOVA

Samara State Technical University, Samara, Russia
Philosophy Department
PhD in Philosophy, Associate Professor

Erosion of Egoism and Diffusion of Sacrifice in Modern Public Discourse

The dichotomy of egoism / altruism, formulated by O. Kont, raises an urgent question of the moral aspect of the existence of the individual and society in the industrial age. Altruism is defined either as a desirable horizon of the future, or sought in the past experience of social solidarity. Traces of the dichotomy still persist in public discourse, but the chance to "fall victim to one's own selfishness" is less and less with the contemporary. Analysis of the interpretation of the self, the "self" in the Heidegger-Foucault line, the analysis of the influence of virtual reality, the progress of technology and bioengineering, the prospects of post- and transhumanism, distributed government of the constructed object - a population, - with health, safety and prosperity showing the process of erosion of selfishness, erosion of borders the individual self. The choice between personal interests and the interests of the Other (others) turns out to be placed in fundamentally new circumstances: expanded in different vectors and planes, "I" is in the limit coincides with the world. Analysis of the practice of legal euthanasia in a new way raises the question of sacrifice in the projection of selfishness / altruism.

Key words: erosion, diffusion, sacrifice, egoism, altruism, body, self, taking care of yourself, values, population, governing rule.

References

Anna SINITSKAYA

Samara Regional Institute for Education and Professional Development, Samara, Russia
PhD in Philology, Associate Professor

The Discourse of "Victim"and the Boundaries of Public Reflection in Networked Communities

The article describes the features of conflict communication and the functioning of the discourse of "victim" and "violence" in Internet communication. In this paper, several case studies, which are described here, disclose this topic on the basis of discussions in network groups - communities that are united by professional ties, the sphere of intellectual activity. The author of the article analyzes the states in which the experience of "victim / sacrifice" is spoken and describes the reaction to the story about this experience in the media space. Voices of "victims" are perceived as voices of "provocateurs" and "aggressors", the description of traumatic experience is included in the field of public reflection.

Key words: network communities (groups), construct of "victim", group aggression, public reflexion, utopia, nostalgic discourse.

References

Ekaterina VASILYEVA

St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia
Associate Professor, PhD in Arts

Economy of Sacrifice and System of Object in the Space of Art in the 20th Century

Turning to the idea of art, the twentieth century faced the problem of the sublime and sacrificial. The artistic object, beyond the limits of the everyday, actualizes the principle of sacred. The system of the work - inviolable, nonfunctional and distanced from the world of the ordinary, brought the concept of art together with the idea of the victim. An object or work of art based on the principle of non-monetary economy finds its analogies in a symbolic and sacrificial form. Art reveals the importance of symbolic meaning, which is recognized as a manifestation of sacred: awareness of the sacrificial basis allows to perceive the object within the artistic system and to identify its artistic status. Within the framework of the article, are examined the features of the functioning of work of art and of an object in the culture of 20th century and of New Times. Besides, article analyses the characteristic of sacrificial form.

Key words: sacrifice, the economy of sacrifice, the economy of gift, equivalent, monetary form, system of art, object, sacred.

References

Yuri PERSHIN

Omsk State Technical University, Omsk, Russia
Department of Labor Psychology and Organizational Psychology
Doctor of Science in Philosophy, Associate Professor

The Sacrifice: a Cynical Approach

The author supposes that the phenomenon of sacrifice should be examined outside the discourse of the sacred, but inside the discourse of re-ligio. Here the systematic approach should be applied, when the world is regarded as a supersystem, and a sacrificing man is its element. However, the sacrifice is considered as a medium/energy source for his local inclusion/integration in the physiogenic theological system (FTS) and maintaining this inclusion for some time. In a situation of survival, it is insufficient to establish a re-ligio in the Lactantius' terms as a simple manifestation of one's existence to some higher powers (a god/gods). For a man it is necessary to establish a re-ligio in the Cicero's terms, as the relationship between the elements of the religious system involving feedback, and as communication. The person with the archaic consciousness considers a representative of the higher powers (a god/a spirit) to be (in modern terms) the Subject who controls the reality. If there are several of such representatives - they are co-Subjects. They manipulate by objects. The sacrifice for such a Subject, therefore, is a means of connection, unification and unity with him.

Key words: sacrifice, sacrificing, physiogenic theological system, subject, subjectivity.

References

Vitaliy DARENSKIY

Lugansk National University, Lugansk
Associate Professor, PhD in Philosophy

Metaphysics of Sacrifice as a Special Type of Hermeneutics of Culture

The article discusses the metaphysics of sacrifice as a universal "inner form" of culture and its paradoxical expressions ranging from basic emotional reactions - to the level of "converted forms", require a special "decoding". The metaphysics of Sacrifice involves a fundamentally different type of ontological categories than those developed in the framework of a rational metaphysics. Consideration of cultural education and its ethical and aesthetic components within the metaphysics of sacrifice is a special type of hermeneutics of culture, which radically exposes the mystery of its internal structure.

Key words: victim, metaphysics, culture, hermeneutics, paradox.

References

Sergei KRUGLIKOV

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

Sacrifice and Metaphors of Time

In this article it's considered the origin of metaphors of time from the sacrifice. The cyclic time of the archaic communities is directly derived from the repetition of the sacrificial ritual. Further explications of the concept of time in ancient philosophy continue to covertly contain the motives of sacrificial representation, which is expressed in stable figures of order, repetition and very concept of the living resurgent and dying Cosmos. The emergence of the second basic metaphor of time - the line - is considered as a fundamentally new attitude to the victim, its denial. The absolute sacrifice of Christ abolishes the very possibility of ritual sacrifice and, so, abolishes the cyclic time itself. In the light of the sacrificial representation, the fundamental incompatibility of these temporal models is revealed. The cyclic one insists on the victim, but brings social unity, while the other one insist on abolishing the victim, but deepens the subjectivity until its complete disconnection from social world. The relevance of the article is connected with the problematization of the temporal meaning of sacrifice in the present, in which, through the media, the intensity of the sacrifice of the victims acquires the character of a permanent sacrifice.

Key words: victim, sacrifice, scapegoat, sacrificial representation, legitimation, power, order, repetition, time metaphor, temporal form, media.

References