INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CULTURAL RESEARCH

Yuriy RAZINOV

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

Post-Marginality Condition

The article discusses the problem of marginality in postmodern culture, which is characterized by openness, non-linearity and transgressiveness. The condition of postmodernism is determined by decentration and segmentation of the entire normative field and the establishment of separate rules for each segment. This problematizes the idea of the marginality of a particular area, which is built relative to the border. Therefore, the very principle of demarcation is called into question. In the postmodern scene, the world is a network with moving borders and a non-localizable center and periphery. As a result, the previous criteria for distinguishing between norm and deviation, border and cross-border phenomena and, accordingly, the basis for marginality itself are lost. Traditional sociology is unlikely to keep pace with these processes. In this regard, the author considers the problem in the conceptual apparatus of the ontology of borders, operating with the concepts of border, edge, limit, exclusion and inclusion, transgression and transcendence, protection and conservation – as ways of interacting with the border. At the same time, the author focuses on the processes of inversion and diffusion of the borders themselves. In conditions of the cross-border nature of “open” systems, the question arises of the fate of the marginal: does marginality persist in its previous forms, or does it change under the pressure of total inclusion, inversion and diffusion. In this regard, the author tries to distinguish between genuine and non-genuine marginality (quasi-marginality), relying on concept of transgression as an ontological horizon of marginality. It is argued that in the post-marginal condition, the primary cumulative impulse of the transgression is suppressed. Deprived of the energy of negation, the new (post) marginality easily fits into modern realities, is appropriated and captured by the market mainstream.

Key words: marginality, post-marginality, quasi-marginality, modern, postmodern, border, edge, limit, violation, negation, protection, inversion, diffusion, inclusion, exclusion, cross-border, transcendence, “open society”, “world without borders”, globalization, liberalism, conservatism, capitalism, abstract universal, special, substantial form, speculative game.

References

Anastasia BRAERSKAYA

Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia
Associate Professor of the Department of Theory of Culture, Ethics and Aesthetics
PhD in Philosophy

Neo-nomadism: a marginal phenomenon of modernity or a new cultural paradigm for gaining identity?

The article considers the problem of neo-nomadic communities in the context of the relationship of marginalization, the construction of personal identity and mobility as characteristics of modern culture. It is shown that global nomads are simultaneously a relevant subject of empirical research, and at the same time they can be a conceptually substantiated type of identity in modern conditions, which, despite the process of marginalization in the 20th century, in the 21st century it becomes a new cultural paradigm for gaining an identity that most fully meets the requirements of modern cultural discourse, which consists in permanent transformation, a situation of constant choice, total individualization, etc. Under these conditions, the figure of the “Other” plays a special role as a means of constructing identity, while the contradiction between settled and nomadic communities are gradually losing their dominant character, and stigmatized lifestyles (vagrancy, lack of permanent work, “home”, Etc.) are gradually becoming role models primarily in the context of youth culture.

Key words: personal identity, personality, individualism, marginality, new nomads, neo-nomadism, nomadology, modern culture, The Other.

References

Alexander SHUNEYKO

Komsomolsk-on-Amur State University, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Russia
Linguistics and Intercultural Communication Department
Professor, Doctor of Sciences in Philology

Olga CHIBISOVA

Komsomolsk-on-Amur State University, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Russia
Associate Professor, PhD in Cultural Anthropology

The phenomenon of strannichestvo in the Scientific Research of the XXI Century

The article aims at analyzing the perception of the phenomenon of strannichestvo in home (Russian) scientific research at the beginning of the XXI century. The main tool is a discursive analysis, which suggests that the cultural phenomenon is considered within the framework of the discourse as a combination of numerous characteristics: from linguistic to ideological and structural. At the same time, the consideration of the various works is carried out using content analysis as the most convenient in the situation where the works belong to different fields of knowledge: theology, cognitive linguistics, philosophy, psychology, art history, aesthetics, etc. In each science, the phenomenon is filled with specific content. This exacerbates the need for a holistic view of its analytical assessment nature. Russian culture perceives strannichestvo as a complex multidimensional phenomenon. This is manifested in many ways: in the absence of accurate translations of the word into other languages; in the availability of imperfect synonyms with significant shifts in semantics; in the absence of clear boundaries for the conceptual complex that this word means. Besides, in its separate parts strannichestvo intersects with a whole series of concepts associated with it, but not identical to it. In this situation, it is logical to expand the boundaries of perceiving the material and try finding out how various studies complement each other. It is this area, but not the sphere of disputes, is most interesting, since it allows approaching the construction of an adequate holistic view. The authors have to admit that it is absent now. The most likely way to achieve it is using the invariant characteristics of the phenomenon. In this regard, the most productive is the perception of strannichestvo as a phenomenon with a simultaneous set of characteristics, which various researchers point to in different ways and with varying degrees of completeness and consistency. It is important that each of the characteristics can manifest itself simultaneously with others in varying degrees of its presence. The set of characteristics gives an adequate idea both of the phenomenon itself and of the ways of its perception and evaluation in culture.

Key words: strannichestvo, pilgrimage, wandering, vagrancy, sponging, hoboism, travel, exile, emigration, creative search, stalking, digging, roofing.

References

Olga KIRILLOVA

Saint Petersburg, Russa
Doctor of Sciences in Cultural Studies, Associate Professor

Metaphysics of Transgressive St Petersburg

The article explores the metaphysical mapping of St Petersburg in terms of margins and transgressive practices using the approaches of G. Batailles transgression theory, schizoanalysis of G. Deleuze and F. Guattari and libidinal economy by J.F. Lyotard. On the one hand, the metaphysics of transgressive St Petersburg remains deeply rooted in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s overtext (The Idiot, above all) which “never ceases to be written” in the urban unconscious, in plots and characters, in the discourse of criminal news (“Dostoevsky in Ligovsky district’ is regarded as a separate topic). On the other hand, the Post-Modernist writings and the digital Post-Post-Modernism defined the new topoi of the urban mythopoetics in writings of authors reviving “St Petersburg novel”, such as M. Palei and A. Gryakalov, in livejournal poetry by A. Dekonskaya, D. Vasilyeva, R. Veresk et al., as well as the “cinematic decadence” of A. Uchitel’ and K.Lopushansky. Erothanatological schizo-semiotical complex of the crossing of Ligovsky prospect as a marginal urban topos highly criminalized and sexualized (the axis of transgression) and Obvodny Canal (the Bypass) as the topos related to death, insanity, suicidality, otherworld (the flow of nonexistence) is regarded in the article as a core of the metaphysics of transgressive St Petersburg nowadays. Flaming transgression concept based on the notion of fire gift as a sacrifice in G. Batailles’ theory defines the libidinal economy of the excessive expenditure as the economics of fire which makes the urban limits to digress and marks the key topoi of “Ligovsky – Obvodny” (the “flaming limits of the north capital”): the quarter of incinerating violent Eros (between Borovaya and Tiushina streets), the quarter of the “trace-erasure” by fire (a new creative schizo-project from Russian poetry lj-blogs “Shkapin-Rosenstein streets destroyed quarter”), the “Fenix-house” as a permanent mark of dying, or “death repeated at the stake” (the first work of the architect Marian Lialewicz in St Petersburg), “fiery Gehenna” of the Bypass of St Petersburg (whereby “Hell is the bad aspect of the subterranean water”, after G. Deleuze), Squad Quartering as a labyrinth for libidinal investments, after J.F. Lyotard; “Trans-Petersburg-Siberian Route” as a failed project of building Gorokhovaya street (‘the most literary street of St Petersburg”) to the Bypass through Semenovsky square where Dostoevsky was supposed to be executed in 1849. Pyriphlegethon as a flow of fire containing suicides’ souls (in some of ancient Greek texts describing Haides) marks the suicidal topos between the Borovoy and Predtechenskiy bridges of the Bypass. Schizoanalysis tracks the decoded erothanatological flows in the mapping of transgression.

Key words: transgression, marginality, metaphysics of St Petersburg, mapping, schizoanalysis, libidinal economy, suicide, erothanathology.

References

Danila RASKOV

Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Head of the Center for the Study of Economic Culture
Associate Professor, PhD in Economics

Laziness and Procrastination as Practices of Activism

Procrastination and laziness in the “culture of total labor” is often referred to as marginal activities or even diseases. The aim of the article is to show at the philosophical level that, on the contrary, procrastination, refusal of labor, laziness and inaction are active and creative practices that form meaningful work. Procrastination, or delaying the execution, allows you to perform many other, unplanned tasks. Refusal of work is embedded in creative work and is the practice whose potential in the form of “lazy action” or “Laziness” is well understood in the framework of the artistic avant-garde (Malevich, Duchamp). Finally, the most radical form – inaction – allows us to go beyond the opposition of labor and leisure. Inaction as an aimless, pointless, impractical action becomes a switch for a new, creative act. The article, thereby, shows the pragmatics of such practices as procrastination, refusal of work and laziness for freedom of action.

Key words: inaction, procrastination, leisure, idleness, laziness, refusal of work.

References

Alexander POGREBNYAK

Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Department of the Problems of Interdisciplinary Synthesis in the Sphere of Social Sciences and Humanities
Associate Professor, PhD in Economics

(Non-)Innocence of Wine, or Free Time Culture in the Era of Total Management

The article critically examines the state of modern culture, which is characterized by the subordination of all aspects of life to “total management”, in other words, their transformation into a variety of business enterprise. Today this fate has befallen not only any productive human activity, but also free time, including such traditionally idle practices as, for example, drinking wine. The culture of wine consumption in modern society is considered in this article as a symbol or symptom whose interpretation should lead to the development of such a social ontology that would allow to overcome the boundaries of “total management” and rehabilitate those forms of experience that are today considered to be marginal at best.

Key words: free time, management, capital, value, co-existence, wine, revolution, marginality.

References

Nikolay GRYAKALOV

Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Philosophy of Science and Technics Department, PhD in Philosophy

Metaphysics of the Potions

The article by the St. Petersburg philosopher and social anthropologist Nikolay Gryakalov (1978–2014) is thematically and conceptually related to the analysis of phenomena that have a cross-cutting character with respect to existence, examined in his monograph “Human Lots. Essays on Total Anthropology” (St. Petersburg, 2015). This article is devoted to the anthropological and existential aspects of the psychedelic phenomenon in relation to total spending conditions, liminal practices and discourses. The article discusses the anthropogenicity of psychedelia as the anthropogenic function of psychoactive substances. The cross-cutting presence of psychedelia in the initial allocation of the basic dimensions of a person is revealed as sensuality, meaning-building, sociality. As a result, the author explicates psychedelia as a “total phenomenon” in the strict terminological sense of this concept. Moreover, the author presents an original look at the significance of psychedelia in the genealogy of consciousness. It is shown how psychoactive substances are actively used to experiment with instinct and to produce emotions that do not last naturally. As a result, one of the fundamental anthropogenic applications of psychedelia is determined, specially its role in the arbitrary setting and retention of sensory techniques. Altered states of consciousness are also problematized as the basis for highlighting the norm of consciousness. The author also concerns the social significance of the use of psychoactive substances, addressing the issues of the connection of psychedelic experience with forms of social continuity, the role of alkaloids in history.

Key words: anthropogenicity, existence, altered states of consciousness, alkaloids, ritual, sacral.

References

Tatiana BORKO

State University of Tyumen, Tyumen, Russia
Department of Russian and Foreign Literature
Doctor of Sciences in Philosophy, Professor

Beyond Human: The Problem of Identity in Contemporary Art Practices

Contemporary art practice demonstrates the desire to break the traditional view of human. The human no longer appears to be the pinnacle of evolution. Artists offer new ways of identification. The process is not based on the opposition of “Homo Sapiens” to other species, but on the identification with them. Artists refute the dominant position of human. They move it to the periphery in the classification of living things. Using modern technology, artists modify the human body, expand physiological capabilities, they destroy the constraints imposed by nature. So the question arises of the limits of human corporeality, about the loss of subjectivity, about the loss of anthropological specifications.

Key words: anthropos, identity, bound, transcendence, action, performance, bio art, science art.

References

Ksenia IGAEVA

Minin Nizhny Novgorod State Pedagogical University, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Research Fellow

Nataliya SHMELEVA

Minin Nizhny Novgorod State Pedagogical University, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Associate Professor of the Department of philosophy and social Sciences, PhD in Philolology

Transformation of Masculinity in Advertising

The article considers the influence of consumer culture on men’s status in society. The status is dictated by advertising behaviors when the desire to promote a product becomes the basis for the transformation of masculinity. An attractive image of product often goes beyond the classical models of male and female behavior, violating social stereotypes and giving people more freedom and power over things, creating new hierarchy of interaction between the buyer and the product, man and thing, man and society. The replicated advertising images conflict with classical notions of hegemonic masculinity, turning a man into a consumer, while the consumption and quality of the goods consumed turn out to be masculinity markers with the phrase “you can afford it”. The advertising industry also eliminates gender inequality by purchasing certain goods that claim masculinity / femininity. As a result, classical models of hegemonic masculinity are in crisis, and new types of masculinity become normal.

Key words: masculinity / femininity, consumer society, advertising, transformation, product, culture of consumption, identity.

References

Andrei SERIKOV

Samara Academy for the Humanities, Samara, Russia
Head of the Department of Humanitarian and Natural Sciences
PhD in Philosophy, Associate Professor

Self-Incomprehension as Origin of Marginal Victimhood

Marginalization usually is understood in terms of belonging to so called marginalized groups, such as homeless people, people in poverty, immigrants, cultural minorities, persons with a serious illness, etc. Close to this understanding are conceptualizations of marginality as social exclusion or as deviation from normal. The weakness of such approaches is not being sufficiently substantiated, since they uncritically accept ideas about cultural and social norms for granted. It is a challenge for philosophy to produce a concept of marginality that is not based on the binary opposition of normal and abnormal. A possible way to do it is to draw on essential relationship between marginality and victimhood, and to understand both independently of concept of normality. Two hermaphrodite stories were used to analyze marginality in context of its deep connection with victimhood: memoirs of 19th-century French hermaphrodite A. H. Barbin, and the novel “Middlesex” by J. Eugenides. Sometimes a hermaphrodite does not know about her/his true condition and thinks she is a girl. Such marginality is more fundamental than just belonging to any of so called marginal groups and knowing it. The marginal has not got proper means for self-comprehension and has to use categories of dominant culture and to compare herself to other girls. As a result she perceives her uniqueness as inferiority and becomes a potential victim. The self-incomprehension makes the marginal more vulnerable to crime or injustice.

Key words: norm, type, prototype, marginal, self-identification, inferiority, victim, victimhood, hermaphrodite.

References

Sergey LISHAEV

Samara University, Samara, Russia
Philosophy Department
Professor, Doctor of Sciences in Philosophy

Marginal Things (Man and his Things: Acceleration, Transformation and Migration)

The main purpose of the article is to inquire into the changes that occurs with things that surround people. The acceleration of production and consumption causes these changes in large part. It grounds in the global shift of existential focus from the eternal, vertical and the will to salvation to the temporal, horizontal and the will to success and self-realization. The logic of success and competition speeded up the turnover of things and resulted in the reduction of co-presence of men with the things in their single being. The article regards cause and effect of the reduction of duration of Dasein co-presence with the particular thing, the shift of people’s attitude to the “fast” things and the manner of the perception and experience of them. The acceleration and price reduction of things leads to the ontological destabilization of them. In the accelerating world the thing tends to be disposable, its substrate minimizes. As a result, the things that surround a man more and more lose the aura inseparable from their existence that makes them single things with their unique history. The reduction of time of co-presence with things makes the relation with them more existentially and emotionally cold. The analysis of interaction schemes allows us to draw conclusions that on the on hand, they simplify the access to the things and on the other hand, they reduce the personal component of relations with durable things. The impersonal contribution model is shown by the example of sharing scheme that turns the durable things into the one-touch-things. The article introduces the notions of dark, grey and white zones. A man is aware of the things from the dark zone but do not interact with them, the thing from the white zone have an aura and an existential value in addition to the utilitarian value while the things from the grey zone are taken into account but leaves us cold and indifferent. It is argued that the reduction of duration of co-presence leads to the migration of things from the white zone of Dasein to the grey (marginal) zone.

Key words: man, thing, time, self-realization, acceleration, essence printout, marginality, white zone, grey zone.

References

Vyacheslav FARITOV

Ulyanovsk State Technical University, Ulyanovsk, Russia
Professor of Philosophy Department
Doctor of Sciences in Philosophy

Marginal Phenomena of Human Being: Metaphysics of Debauchery

The article is devoted to the study of debauchery as a marginal phenomenon of human being. The main objective of the article is to develop a meta-physical approach to understanding the marginal phenomena of the sexual sphere of human life. In accordance with the task, the author relies not on the ideas of Freudians and poststructuralists, but on the heritage of the church fathers and representatives of Russian religious philosophy. The main result of the study is the representation of debauchery as a metaphysical phenomenon. Based on the conceptual development of the representatives of Russian religious philosophy (N.A. Berdyaev, S.N. Bulgakova, B.P. Vysheslavtseva), the author substantiates the thesis that debauchery is characterized by a tendency to deny precisely the metaphysical, supersensible sphere of human being. Debauchery as a metaphysical phenomenon is an attempt to establish the natural, animal, instinctive, pure sexuality-related principle as a priority area of a human being. Since debauchery is focused on the negation of the metaphysical sphere of being, thereby it reveals its conditionality with this sphere.

Key words: marginality, metaphysics, transgression, debauchery, Russian philosophy, crisis of European metaphysics.

References

Helen PETROVSKY

Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences , Moscow, Russia
Head of the Department of Aesthetics, PhD in Philosophy

Photography: Memory Formulae

The article poses the following essential question: Is it possible – via photography – to conceptualize a time that would serve as an alternative to historical time? In order to propose an answer, the author turns to Aby Warburg’s “pathos formulae”, an idea developed on the basis of his studies of Italian Renaissance art and graphically presented in the Mnemosyne Atlas, a collection of visual images from different epochs and cultures that initially consisted of 63 panels filled with reproductions. Another conceptual support is the scholar’s famous library, the organization of which testifies to his non-hierarchical and interdisciplinary approach to historical sources. In the most general sense, “pathos formulae” are recurring elements of representations that display intense movement or “passionate gesticulation”, in Warburg’s own words. Such elements have one thing in common – they express the intensity of the emotion represented, while the content of the passions and events may be downright antithetic (for example, joy and fear). If one takes into account the “migration of images”, that is, their movement from one epoch and/or geographical region to another (again, this is Warburg’s idea), then one is faced with an alternative history of cultural forms, which essentially revolves around the repetition of non-mimetic elements of representations, whose significance depends on their giving expression to a shared, i.e. common, experience. Warburg describes it in terms of an engram, a concept borrowed from the evolutionary biologist Richard Semon. And although he mentions the concept in passing, we can restore Semon’s original logic by directly turning to his work.
The trace of affective experience persists in works of art, ensuring their “afterlife” or survival. Thus understood, an imprint stands in opposition to representation. It should be noted that this conception coincides with the arrival of the photograph which itself is seen as a technological imprint. For Warburg himself photography is clearly auxiliary – it is instrumental in creating his unprecedented Atlas. However, we might conclude that the very idea of “pathos formulae” and their transmission becomes possible thanks to the invention of photography. On the other hand, one should elaborate on the notion of imprint itself. An imprint (including its technological version) is not some sort of mold or impression taken from a thing, but rather the transformation of representation into a stain (blind spot), allowing for the operation of forces and suspending the mechanism of imitation. An imprint is the photograph being a point of intersection of multiple relations. And although we develop this understanding of photography after its end, that is, in the digital era, it is precisely this potential present in photography from its very outset that allows one to view it as a revealer (detector) of a different time. Such time is ahistorical, its scope and rhythms transcending human measure.

Key words: photography, memory, engram, “pathos formulae”, A. Warburg, M. Barashe, R. Semon, Ch. Darwin, F. Nietzsche.

References

Anton DENIKIN

Film & Television School (GITR), Moscow, Russia
Professor of the Department of Sound Engineering and Musical Arts
PhD in Cultural Studies, Associate Professor

Conceptualization of Post-Screen Affective Body Experience in Digital Interactive Multimedia Research

The article discusses ways to obtain affective-body experience and generate new knowledge using digital interactive multimedia. Based on the analysis of a number of research, it is concluded that updating of the device communications in the era of digital new media: media tools become post-screen, since they are used not so much for on-screen display or representation of information, but for managing it, combining and mass using various media data, media objects, and media drives. Knowledge generation is carried out through the practice of active participation in its creation, instead of receiving and assimilating already-made knowledge. In the new communication paradigm, people are recognized as equal participants in the overall “ecology” of building digital spaces, along with other actors – digital objects, machines, processes, and technologies, each of which has certain means for self-expression and interaction with other participants in the “ecology”. Proairetic interfaces provide receptive practices, but at the same time enable users to physically respond and act in response to the experience. Discussion of the concept of “electracy”, proposed by the American philosopher Gregory Ulmer allows us to partially clarify the specifics of post-screen communications in the era of digital media. Digital media practices organize various cases-affects through networks of interaction between human and non-human actors, create opportunities for actualization of previously marginalized, pre-conscious forces of chance. Choragraphy, defined as a special way of obtaining experience, is considered as an alternative to verbal and written language, and eureutics as a method of obtaining knowledge through experience (and describing) chorographic processes. It is concluded that various possibilities for the user experience of their own bodily activity, organizing itself in the digital and network projects, can make a special “aesthetics of participation”. Somatic experience, understanding of selfacting, “thinking” body and embodiment in the technologically-supported interaction can probably get the status of the new apparatus of communication in contemporary digital art and post-screen culture.

Key words: post-screen culture, new media, digital multimedia, participation, embodiment, proairetic interfaces, hypocrisy, electracy, choragraphy, euretics.

References

Alexey SALIN

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
Faculty of Philosophy
Assistant of Department of Philosophy for Natural Science Faculties
PhD in Philosophy

Ekaterina GALANINA

Tomsk Polytechnic University, Tomsk, Russia
School of Engineering Entrepreneurship
Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia
Institute of Arts and Culture
Department of Culturology, Theory and History of Culture
Associate Professor, PhD in Philosophy

Adventurous Chronotope in Video Games: Present and Future

This paper aims to explore special features of virtual narrative and chronotope in videogames. The objects of study are adventure videogames, i.e. games, in which the plot is based on the traditions of adventure fiction. The main methodological foundations of the article are provided by Bakhtin’s works on literature. Starting out from them, the authors depict how the ways of shaping of adventure narrative and chronotope changed through the transfer from literature to other media forms: movies and videogames. The authors show that common traits of adventure chronotope in adventure fiction, movies and videogames are adventure time, abstract extensive space and specific hero image. Then they conclude that due to the interactivity of videogames as medium they revolve the traditional correlation between time and space that characterized fiction and movies. In conclusion the authors discuss those artistic means of realization of adventure genre in videogames that still were underused by game designers.

Key words: game studies, videogame, myth, media, time, hero, adventure, virtual narrative, chronotope, Bakhtin.

References

Konstantin TIMASHOV

National Research University «Higher School of Economics», Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Senior Lecturer of Saint-Petersburg School of Social Sciences and Area Studies
Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Graduate Student in Institute of Human Philosophy, Department of Philosophical Anthropology and History of Philosophy

Repressed Theory: Cinema in Mythology and Semiology of Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes’ works on cinema remain insufficiently understood. The aim of the present article is to reconstruct his theory of cinema, focusing on semiotic issues and tracing its development in the general evolution of his thoughts from so called pre-structuralist to the structuralist period. I set to analyze well-known articles from the book “Mythologies” (1957), as weak as some little-known ones that have not been translated in Russian, such as the voice-over for the film “Sport and Men”, a review of Mario Ruspoli’s film “The Strangers of the Earth”, an answer about James Bond et al.
The assumption is that in the first period the analysis of films consisted mainly of debunking the myths of mass culture, which did not imply the creation of an integral theory of cinema. At the same time, the mythology model became the starting point for his “semiology of the film image”. Faced with a number of difficulties in applying the linguistic methodology to the analysis of films, he left the further development of this project and did not create a structuralist cinema theory. In the early 1960s, he returned to the mythological issues in cinema, its sociology and politics, which can be seen, for example, in his collaboration with Canadian documentary filmmakers.

Key words: cinéma-vérité, Claude Chabrol, direct cinema, Hubert Aquin, Mario Ruspoli, meaning, myth, Robert Bresson, Roland Barthes, semiology, semiotics of cinema, sign, structuralism.

References

Dimitri SPIVAK

D.S.Likhachev Russian Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage, Russia
Head of the UNESCO Chair on Comparative Studies of Spiritual Traditions, their Specific Cultures and Interreligious Dialogue, Head of Center for Basic Studies in the Sphere of Culture
Human Brain Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, St.Petersburg, Russia
Principal Research Fellow, Doctor of Sciences in Philology

Guylchokhra SEYIDOVA

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

Alina VENKOVA

Herzen State Pedagogical University, St.Petersburg, Russia
Associate Professor, PhD in Cultural Studies
D.S.Likhachev Russian Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage, Moscow
Center for Basic Studies in the Sphere of Culture, Principal Research Fellow

Intrinsic Religiosity of Shiite Muslims in Russia

The paper presents results of a mass psychological survey of intrinsic religiosity of Shiite Muslims in Russia, conducted by experts of UNESCO Chair on Comparative Studies of Spiritual Traditions, their Specific Cultures and Interreligious Dialogue, based at D.S.Likhachev Russian Scientific Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage. 100 members of the local religious community of Shiite Muslims, aged and young, female and male, were interviewed, basing on the facilities of the historical Juma Mosque at the city of Derbent, in the south of the Republic of Daghestan. As a result, three dominant psychological experiences were detected: (a) having “spiritual experience that strengthened one’s belief in God’, (b) “feeling close to God”, (c) having “experience that convinced one of God’s existence”, two moderate experiences: (d) “spending considerable time on religious or spiritual practices”, (e) “considering oneself as strongly religious’ or, as “spiritually-oriented”, and two weaker ones: (f) “feeling often to be very close to a powerful spiritual force”, and (g) definitely agreeing to the statement “God dwells within me”. Dominant experiences tended to be dynamic / active, while the weak ones were mostly static and passive. No statistically relevant dependence upon age and / or sex of respondents was detected in the case of the dominant experiences, most possibly due to their being too strong. As to the moderate ones, strong degree of dependence upon age and / or sex was detected. Aged women tended to get the highest scores on all seven sub-scales applied by us; aged men revealed a somewhat lower level of intrinsic religiosity. Young men occupied the second place from the top at five scales out of seven, applied by us, while young women got the lowest scores. Thus, basing on strictly formal criteria, two focal types of intrinsic religiosity of Shiite Muslims in Russia were revealed, one of them being characteristic for aged people, especially aged women, another one, being almost exclusively proper for young men.

Key words: Intrinsic religiosity, Shiite Muslims, intercultural dialogue.

References