Russian Masscult: Reflections about the Specificity of the Author’s Vision

Abstract

The review notes the specifics of understanding the Russian mass culture transformation, given by the domestic cultural studies expert, literary critic and philosopher I.V. Kondakov.The monograph “Russian Mass Culture: From Baroque to Post-Modernism” is interesting for its relevant methodology, which allows to build a scientific model that can combine classical issues and mo­dern interpretations. The methodology is based on the principles of dialectical development of masscult; literature-centrism is considered the main idea of the author, which determines the main trends in the development of Russian mass culture. The author’s position of “out-presence” regarding to the subject of his research proves that it is legitimate to review the logical and illogical in the history and development of the Russian masscult. The architectonics of I.V. Kondakov’s scientific research is defined as having a circular structure, which connects the metho­dological foundations of the peer-reviewed monog­raph with H.-G. Gadamer’s “hermeneutic circle”. The author defines three features in the understanding of mass culture, defined by the negation of “-not”: its emergence is “not connected” exclusively with the 20th century; the origins “can not” have only ethno-national character; “do not belong” to a certain socio-economic formation. He manages to open the boundaries of the usual interpretations of mass culture due to a more voluminous approach to the subject of research. This approach, of course, required the scientist to apply not only encyclopedic know­ledge, but also a consistent analysis of the broad historical, cultural, and literary context of the undertaken research. The article notes the representativeness of the author’s sample of personalities for the study, which is reflected in the index of names, in particular.The study is characterized as somewhat provocative, offering the reader an unexpectedly new interpretation of famous works, presented mainly by Russian literature.The specificity of the author’s interpretation lies in the fact that the philosophical-culturological concept of the Russian masscult transformation not only brings a kind of research result, but also determines the vectors for further study of the issue.