INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CULTURAL RESEARCH

Tatiana SIDNEVA

Nizhny Novgorod State Glinka Conservatoire, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Vice-Rector for Research, Head of the Department of Philosophy and Aesthetics
Professor, Doctor of Science in Cultural Studies

Valery ZUSMAN

National Research University Higher School of Economics-Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Professor, Doctor of Science in Philology, Academic Supervisor

Literature and Music as Liminal Cultural Codes

Culture can be described as the space of life-based on the set of sense construction and destruction processes, the interaction of multiple flows of information, symbolization and desymbolization. In this dynamically changing space, the crucial meaning is acquired by code – a phenomenon which has multiple definitions and opens the vast perspective for the investigation of cognition of culture in its unity as well as its local and temporary types, definite forms and parameters.
The authors of the article on the grounds of the analysis of the typological basis of cultural codes, formulated by R. Barthes, M. Foucault, U. Eco, Ju. Lotman and other scholars, point out the importance of borderline for understanding how codes operate in culture. The dialectics of division and union, isolation and dialogue, order and chaos characteristic of borderline, allows treating the liminal position as a significant attribute of code. The authors suggest introducing the term “liminal code” which opens new opportunities in the research of the cultural codes “operating mode” and the dynamics of their interaction.
Within the framework of the “liminal codes”, the interaction of literature and music is analyzed in the article. This interaction is displayed in the following aspects: from the broad understanding of “literariness” and “musicality” – to the comprehension of the multiplicity of forms of interaction of languages of art, including the borderlines of literary descriptions of music and musical interpretations of literature.
The invocation to the investigation of the dialectics of literature and music borderline is dictated by their importance for the understanding of the universality (omnipresence) of cultural codes as well as identification of their liminal nature.

Key words: cultural code, borderline, liminal space, “encounter” of cultural codes, art, literature, music, hybrid zones of culture.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00014

Olga BURUKINA

University of Vaasa, Vaasa, Finland
PhD in Philology, Associate Professor, Senior Researcher

Meta-relations of the concepts “cultural code” and “connotation” in “cultural translation”

The article discusses the basis of the author’s concept of the relationship between connotation, connotative fields of words and cultural codes in a systemic interdisciplinary research paradigm. Emphasizing the emotional origin of connotation and the importance of emotions as part of cultural codes, the author argues that connotation and cultural codes are embedded in the system of metadata, particularly important for translation as intercultural mediation, and based on numerous examples from contemporary films and literary works, explains the importance of correct understanding of connotation and components of cultural codes when translating to avoid translation errors that otherwise hinder understanding difficult or make it impossible.

Key words: interdisciplinary paradigm, meta-relations, connotation, cultural code, cultural translation, intercultural mediation, connotative theory of translation.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00015

Egor DOROZHKIN

Nizhny Novgorod State Glinka Conservatoire, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Department of Philosophy and Aesthetics, Lecturer

The Boundary of Nature and Culture in the Romantic and Post-Romantic Perspective

Martin Heidegger argued that the interpretation of a particular culture itself and all being is always contained in its definition of nature, it does not matter whether this concept is conceived as contraposition (“nature and culture”, “nature and history”, “nature and spirit”), or as Totality itself. In other words, the statement about nature is included in culture as its constitutive element. The objective of this article is to attempt to consider the dialectic of the statement of culture about nature and nature itself as the horizon of this statement in the romantic and post-romantic perspective, since in German Romanticism and the forms of knowledge that inherit it manifested conceptual designs that mark the modern status of the concept “nature” in our cultural practices. On this basis, nature, as we will try to show, appears not as an objective basis for a cultural superstructure, nor is it a political scheme for the naturalization of ideological bases, but a system of “non-sites” covering all levels of cultural production.

Key words: nature, culture, romanticism, protomodern, subject, dissolution, affect, process, the open, non-site, code, cultural pessimism.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00016

Natalia SMIRNOVA

Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
Department of Philosophical Problems of Creativity
Doctor of Science in Philosophy, Professor, Principal Researcher, Head of Department

Self and Other: Sliding Boundary in Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity

The problem of boundary proves to have more particular conceptual meanings, than in general philosophical framework. Within philosophical anthropological context, it presents the problem of “Self and Other”s boundary, fundamental for human personal self-identification. The phenomenological solution of intersubjectivity’s problem in the founder of transcendental phenomenology’s works as well as in post-Husserlian phenomenological criticism of the problem has briefly been observed in this paper. Substantiated, that inherent to transcendental phenomenology intersubjectivity’s problem solution in E. Husserl’s “Vth Cartesian Meditation” involves one fundamental contradiction: intention to constitute the Other within the framework of my own pure transcendental Ego and at the same time, to prove his independent existence from my own stream of consciousness. It has been clearly demonstrated, that phenomenological consideration of this problem differs in the works of M. Merlo-Ponty, J.-P. Sartre, M. Sheler and A. Shutz. “Commonplace” of post-Husserlian phenomenological criticism was the following: all of them consider the boundary between Self and Other’s corporeality as irreducible to the difference of spatial perspective of “here” and “there”. They reasonably pointed out to irreducibility of inner (self)perception to outer perception. E. Husserl’s followers constituted a new conceptual framework for intersubjectivity problem’s solution as fundamental for the philosophical background of humanities’ and social sciences’ methodology.

Key words: boundary, cultural ontology, Self, Other, phenomenology, intersubjectivity.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00017

Tatiana BORKO

State University of Tyumen, Tyumen, Russia
Department of Foreign Literature, Doctor of Science in Philosophy, Professor

Mythological Code: Enduring Relevance

The article analyzes the mythological code that is a system of rules and ways of interaction between the signified and signifier. Like C. Levi-Strauss, we mean by myth not a sum of plots, but a certain way of perceiving and description of the world. The story told in the myth contains hidden meanings that cannot be interpretable. In the mythological narrative, it is difficult to ascertain how the meaning of images of legend arises. It appears that between the signified and the signifier is established not a metaphorical but a symbolic type of connection. The question is what encoding methods are used?
At all stages of the history of the study of mythology, researchers considered images of myth as cyphers of certain phenomena (meteorological, psychological). From the epoch of romanticism, philosophers began to view mythical images as signs, referring to the transcendent, to an incomprehensible mystery. In spite of the nebula of meanings and the uncertainty of the functions of the images, mythology is relevant to contemporary culture. The mythological code opens up new possibilities for interpretation. It is a universal model capable of resolving any contradictions. .

Key words: mythological code, semiotics, semantics, structure, symbol, image, interpretation.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00018

Aida MOSEYKO

Institute for African Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
Center for Civilizational and Regional Studies
PhD in Philosophy, Assistant Professor, Leading Researcher

Elena KHARITONOVA

Institute for African Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
Center for Civilizational and Regional Studies
PhD in Psychology, Assistant Professor, Senior Researcher

The Meeting of African Traditional Ethics with Western Christianity and the Formation of Border Ethical- Religious Identity (in the Context of the Theory of Cultural Codes)

The article presents a theoretical and methodological study, which is located at the junction of modern African studies, cultural studies and religious studies. The subject of the research is the forms of the relationship between traditional African ethics with Christianity. The basics of traditional African ethical ideas, their specificity and contradictory interaction with “Western” Christianity are analyzed.
The use of the theory of cultural codes in this study was productive. A feature of the functioning of cultural codes in various areas of culture is their interaction and mutual influence. The religious codes actively interact with the codes of all spheres of culture and have a significant influence on them. In traditional Africa, ethical codes are intertwined with religious codes. Therefore, changes in religious codes will certainly affect ethical codes and vice versa.
The article deals with the possibility of new coding methods using the “sociogenome” model. This model was practically never used before either in African studies or in cultural studies. “Sociogenome” can be defined as a structure in which a set of social codes-programs are concentrated that is necessary for the livelihoods of specific social groups. In parallel with the change of “sociogenomes”, a collective ethical-religious border identity is formed in African communities.
The article discusses the relationship of traditional forms of religion with Christianity in the socio-historical and cultural-ethical context. The processes of mutual influence led, first of all, to the formation of a new syncretic religion – Afro-Christianity. Western Christianity also changed, for example, some Christian moral principles were revised, in particular, the principle of the universality of Western morality. These complex processes of meeting, collisions of different religious and ethical systems are also considered in the context of the theory of cultural codes. Special attention is paid to the transformation and change of cultural codes and “sociogenomes”.
The author draws attention to the little-studied problem of new Afro-Christian theologies, first of all, “Political Theology”. This theology is coloured by the spirit of social ethics. This theology was formed under the influence of the experience of the liberation struggle of the Third World. In turn, “Political Theology” influenced social theology, adopted, in particular, in Africa. This is the “Theology of Liberation” and “Black Theology”.

Key words: Traditional ethics, Western Christianity, Afro-Christianity, Sub-Saharan Africa, border identity, cultural codes, “sociogenome”, worldview universals, vitality, social evangelism, political theology.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00019

Evgenia REDKOVA

Saint-Petersburg State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory, St. Petersburg, Russia Associate Professor of the Ethnomusicology Department, PhD in Arts History

«All are of the Dust, and All will be Turned to Dust Again»: Children’s Games «at a Funeral» and Lamentations in Folk Traditions of the Pskov Region

The concept of the cultural code which became the tool of humanities in the XXth century is relevant in the interpretative studies of folklore texts. The typical for traditional consciousness boundary thinking is shown in various aspects of the traditional culture such as rites, texts, standards of behaviour. Games “at a funeral” and the lamentations of the Pskov region relating to the children’s folklore became an object of the article. The records made by the folklore expeditions (from 1978 up to 2006) by the St. Petersburg (Leningrad) State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory and stored in the archive of the Folklore and Ethnographic Mekhnetsov Centre were used as the material for this article.
The children game «at a funeral» reflects the main stages of a funeral ceremony in a general view. The most characteristic, genre-forming signs are reproduced in lamentations. They are nevertheless recognized in terms of local specifics of the lament traditions in Pskov region. The gaming interpretation by children of funerals and lamentations is a necessary stage of growth and a way for the conceptualization of categories “life” and “death”, “origin” and “end” which have a cyclic change. Folk performers estimate a children's game “at a funeral” and lamentations as the ambivalent phenomenon because the gap between the perception of these events as “overindulgence”, entertainment and real emotional experiences is very small.

Key words: boundary code, folklore genres, children’s folklore, children’s games, game “at a funeral”, lamentations, rites of passage, funeral rite, Pskov region, folklore expeditions of the St. Petersburg state Rimsky-Korsakov conservatory.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00020

Oleg ZOTOV

M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
Faculty of Philosophy, Department of History and Theory of World Culture
Assistant Professor, PhD of Philosophy

Boundary and Wisdom (Some Notes on Irish Mythopoetical Tradition)

The object of this paper’s analysis is the liminal character of Early Irish early medieval poetical knowledge. It has clearly been shown, that the peculiarity of mythopoetical interpretation of poetical gift and sacral knowledge is based on supposition, that they are usually acquired in liminal situations, and for this reason are essentially liminal. Early medieval interpretation of liminality bore wide general cultural meaning: bearer of sacral knowledge was usually considered as a liminal person who derived his knowledge from the liminal sources. The author reveals that in many ancient cultures, including Early Irish one, indeterminacy, adhered to liminal condition, was viewed as the source of sacral and poetical power. Extraordinary actions ascribed to liminal persons and liminal objects were considered as the sources of extraordinary power. For this reason, liminality may be viewed, on the one hand, as a universal category of early medieval culture, that transcends everyday life and destroys habitual social and cognitive order, but on the other hand, it bridges a gap between habitual but totally different categorical structures of early medieval culture.

Key words: medieval culture, boundary, liminality, supernatural, poetry, sacral knowledge.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00021

Natalia SAZONOVA

Tomsk State Pedagogical University, Tomsk, Russia Faculty of History and Philology, Chair of Russian History and Methodology of Teaching History and Social Science Doctor of Science in Philosophy, Professor, Head of Chair

Spatio-Temporal Codes of Oral Culture in Written Liturgical Text and Conflict of Two Cultures

The article analyzes the problem of changing cultural codes and the reflection of this process in written liturgical texts on the example of Russian culture of the XVII century. Special attention is paid to the cultural codes of space and time. They transform over the course of the XVII century. This is due to the transition from the culture of the oral word, which presupposes the existential experience of Sacred history, to the culture with the priority of the written text, focused on the understanding of events.
In the field of changes in the cultural codes of time presented in the written text, in particular, in the forms of verbs, such a transition means that the praying person from the participant of the events of Sacred time turns into their spectator: the events are comprehended, not experienced. In this regard, the cultural codes of space are changing – a number of text changes remove words with a double, Church and worldly, connotation, clearly separating the space of the worldly and sacred. All these changes lead to serious cultural transformations associated with a new vision of the role of spiritual life in everyday life and a new understanding of Sacred history. At the same time, the codes of the culture of oral speech continue to be present in the liturgical texts, which creates a conflict between the two cultures.

Key words: cultural code, oral text, written text, space, time, worship, liturgical reform of Patriarch Nikon.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00022

Tatyana BOCHKOVA

Nizhny Novgorod State Glinka Conservatoire, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Professor at the Department of Music History and the Department of Organ and Harpsichord
PhD in Art History

Baroque Codes in German Romantic Organ Sonata

Romantic organ sonata is one of the genre phenomena that appeared in the middle of the XIX century in the musical art of Germany. Such features of romantic aesthetics as retrospective thinking, “longing for God” (Z. Mirkina), the unattainability of the creative ideal, the thirst for Eternity have merged in the worldview of German romantics with the Baroque era. One of its symbols for musicians was the organ, and the most optimal concert model of the genre in the sound space of a secularized era was the sonata. The article discusses the main categories of the implementation of the Baroque codes – genre, symbolic- metaphorical – in the works of the most prominent authors of organ sonatas in Germany and France – F. Mendelssohn, J.G. Rheinberger, J. Reubke, M. Reger, A. Guilmant and others. In this context, the baroque “codes” acquire the qualities of the “sign” of the epoch. The author focuses mainly on the idea of a baroque-romantic synthesis that defines the main stylistic “field” of this genre in Germany, as well as the Protestant choir, which becomes the key “marker” of the baroque in the German romantic organ sonata.

Key words: romantic organ sonata, baroque codes, protestant choral, stylistic dialogue, sign, European organ tradition.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00023

Elena BULYCHEVA

Nizhny Novgorod State Glinka Conservatoire, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Department of Aesthetics and Philosophy, PhD in Philosophy, Professor

The Myth as a Cultural Code in Western European Sculpture of the Turn of the XX–XXI Centuries

Mythological characters have been externalized as a sculpture since Ancient Greece, that substantial combination has been set in European cultural consciousness. Myth as a distinctive voice of civilization has been formed in close interaction with outward things. Humanity has been using myth for understanding and forming the world. Sculpture more than any other visual art holds its spatial essence. Sculpture does not imitate space, it exists in space. Therefore, in the dialogue of myth and sculpture, space itself and its fillings are essentially predetermined.
In the 20th century both myth and sculpture seemed to undergo fundamental changes: in the ways, both myth and sculpture functioned, in the range of topics and problems that the artists tried to approach, in expressive possibilities of the plastic art, in fading out some of the mythological plots and subjects.
But what is going on in reality? How is the situation with this hundred of years old duo now? The peculiarity of the myth in the late XX – early XXI centuries is that of all its many functions, the most relevant become communicative. After leaving its ancestral sacred territory, myth actively functions as a secondary symbolic system that can capture and broadcast the most diverse information. Mythological structures are widely exploited in advertising, in political projects, in show business, etc.
The sculpture by this time, too, it would seem, has long acquired a secular character and exists according to the personal preferences of an individual author. But despite all visible emancipation both myth and sculpture have retained their sacred roots, that is most obvious when they engage in dialogue. Although traditional mythological plots are still used, principles of mythological thinking play the most important role in this dialogue. Not only classical subjects mythologized nowadays, but also crisis phenomena of the modern reality.
Analysis of the correlation between relevant mythological structures and specific sculpture art projects opens up a possibility to identify the most diverse interactions of these different code systems. In this paper, we attempt to trace the most significant of them.

Key words: myth, sculpture, code systems, mythopoetic space, interpretation, XX century, Neal Barab, Ekkehard Altenburger, Helaine Blumenfeld, Colin Caffell, Carl Payne, Luigi Galligani Margot Homan, Fernando Botero.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00024

Evgeny KOZLOV

Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Moscow, Russia
Institute of Law and National Security, Doctor of Science in Philosophy, Professor

Series in the Space of Cultural Codes

Can the preference of certain narrative structures at the symbolic level reach the status of cultural characteristics? The non-controversial in details, but true, in fact, positioning of the narrative or, more precisely, a specific set of narrative constructions-as an individualizing factor in the physiognomy of cultures is reflected in the interpretations of the dominant myths and dominant worldview.
It is important to note that in methodological terms, the lack of structural analysis of the series can be compensated for by the social literary approach. We believe it is right to expand the understanding of architectural intertextual influences due to the sphere of media relationships that determine the existence of modern texts.
The artistic fabric of the series becomes much more complex: characters and plot collisions involve different interpretations, abandoning the predictability of the happy ending, the series acquires tragic endings, or at least keep their audience until the last moment in the tension associated with the openness of the finale. The series is no longer “a place where nothing happens“. The density and plasticity of the series allow within its structures to build dialectical relationships between new and repeated, to participate in the formation of cultural codes of today, defining the communicative habits of modern man.

Key words: Narrativization, series, popular culture, naive reader, an experienced reader, architextuality, combinatorics new and repeat, from fragmented narrative, the density and plasticity of the narrative.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00025

Nadezhda AGANINA

Ural State University of Architecture and Art, Ekaterinburg, Russia
Faculty of Design, Department of Graphic Design
PhD in Art History, Associate Professor

Maria TRETYAKOVA

Ural State University of Architecture and Art, Ekaterinburg, Russia
Faculty of Design, Department of Graphic Design
PhD in Art History, Associate Professor

The Calligraphic “Icon” of Goho Hibino: to the Problem of Understanding the Japan Cultural Code

The study is devoted to the problem of understanding of Japanese calligraphy works by natives of Russian culture. As an example, one can understand the work of one of the greatest masters of the twentieth century Goho Hibino (1901-1985), in whose manner “the image of an old man smiling with an enlightened smile” is seen. It is believed that it was in “Hiyoko” (“Chicken”) (1968) that the calligrapher managed to free his spirit and touch the divine. However, the cultural meaning of this work remains inaccessible for understanding by the Russian audience. In order to carry out the “translation” of the Japanese cultural code embodied in the work of G. Hibino, the authors of the article compare the cultural meanings of Kana calligraphy and Russian icon painting. Accordingly, the comparative method is used as the methodological basis of the study. The authors come to the conclusion that the originality of Japanese Kana calligraphy is in its everyday nature. Unlike the icon, a calligraphic work only captures the moment between the past and the future, although this moment is poetically beautiful. The poetic vision of the beauty of the moment in Kana calligraphy is associated with Buddhist enlightenment, in which “there is nothing painted in iridescent colours, everything is grey, extremely modest and unattractive”.

Key words: cultural code, Japanese calligraphy, kana calligraphy, twentieth-century calligraphy, Goho Hibino calligraphy, Japanese aesthetics, wabi, sabi, tsuya, Japanese poetry, yohaku emptiness, Russian iconography, Russian aesthetics, toska.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00026

Leonid MENSHIKOV

СSaint-Petersburg State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory, St. Petersburg, Russia
Head of the Humanities Department, PhD in Philosophy, Associate Professor

Border Codes of Intermediary Practices in the Neo-Avant-garde Art

The postmodern aesthetics rejects the possibility of precise definitions and patterns in the field of creativity. The result is an understanding of art as a non-systematic, chaotic phenomenon which meaning is the crossing of borders. At the same time, the artistic practice of the second half of the 20th century provides examples of searches and formulations of borderline cultural and artistic codes. They fix the existence of different boundaries in the art; one can try to overcome them starting there. Intermedial aesthetics becomes one of the strategies in this approach to establish cultural codes in the art. Its author, an American artist and theorist of art Dick Higgins suggested a look at the current state and future of arts based on the concept of “intermedia”. His look referred to a survey of contemporary art. The article analyzes the theoretical and artistic works of Higgins. The author draws conclusions about the main components and the structure of Higgins’ concept of contemporary art. At the centre of the conclusions is the characteristic of intermedial art as a reference actionist project which combined avant-garde and postmodernist artistic attitudes on the basis of the stylistic analysis of Higgins’ works.

Key words: Action Art, intermedia, boundary code, synthesis of arts, Dick Higgins, happening, anti-aesthetics, art borders, total art, Neo-Avant-garde.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00027

Karina ANTONIAN

Herzen State Pedagogical University, St. Petersburg, Russia
Associate Professor, PhD in Cultural Studies

Applied Culturology in the System of Humanitarian Knowledge

The article deals with the problems applied culturology in humanitarian knowledge. It analyses the role and place of researches in the area of applied culturology from the point of view of their effectiveness and appropriateness for a society’s socio-cultural requirements. Applied culturology still continues self-reflection to determine its specificity and applicability of the culturological approach in practice. Applied culturology can be considered as an independent scientific speciality with its own theory and also practice-oriented knowledge. In applied culturology can be developed effective models of cultural policy and forms of culturology expertise. It is noted that today the heuristic and practical potential of applied cultural studies is poorly used. It is concluded that it is necessary to continue research in this area because of their relevance and prospects.

Key words: applied culturology, humanitarian knowledge, socio-cultural sphere, culturology researches, practical culturology, cultural policy, culturological expertise.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00028

Andrey MUKHIN

Saint- Petersburg State Institute of Culture, St. Petersburg, Russia
Doctor of Science in Philosophy, Associate Professor, Professor of the Department of Museology and Cultural Heritage

Exhibition as an Event vs Exhibition as Idea. On Marina Biryukova’s Book “The Philosophy of Curatorship”

Marina Biryukova's book The Philosophy of Curatorship provides a detailed analytical review of the evolution of curatorship of art projects in their connection with popular philosophical concepts of modernity. The book covers the exhibition activities of the period of postmodernism, curatorial conceptions in the field of contemporary art, aspects of mimesis in exhibition projects, the idea and symbolism of museum in the exhibition practice, the basic cultural myths in curatorial projects.

Key words: curator, exhibition project, contemporary art, postmodernism, aesthetics, museum.

References

DOI: 10.24411/2079-1100-2019-00029