Abstract
While the current focus on how digital technology alters our conception of the self and its place in the broader perceived reality yields fascinating insight into modern issues, there is much to be gained by analyzing the presence of dualist and augmented reality discourses in a pre-digital era. This essay will examine the ontological interplay of textual dualist norms in the Russian and Soviet states of the 19th and early 20th centuries and how those norms were challenged by augmented claims embodied in rumors, refrains, and the spelling of names. By utilizing the informational concepts of mobility and asynchronicity, three Russian historical vignettes—the Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861, the documentation of Jews in Imperial Russia, and the attempts by Trotsky to realize Soviet symchka—demonstrate that not only are dualist discourses prevalent in periods outside of the contemporary, but also that the way in which those conflicts framed themselves in the past directly influences their deployment in today’s digital world.
Highlights
In 1861, the governor of Kaluga province in the Russian Empire ordered that 167 of his representatives, known as the “heralds of liberty”, travel to every community in the area and ensure that relevant sections of the recently enacted Emancipation statues be read and interpreted “correctly”by peasants who lived there
“Incorrect” interpretations espoused by peasants proved especially dangerous for Russian rulers because, at the core of their use, these variations exposed the fundamental crisis between textual dualist reality, advocated by the ruling elite, and an augmented reality, advocated by the peasants and others in subordinate positions of power
While peasants would increasingly deal with the textual dualist reality of the Imperial government in the post-emancipation period, another significant population of the Russian domain, Jews, experienced asynchronous disruptions when attempting to assert their augmented reality claims in the face of textual dualist documentation records
Summary
In 1861, the governor of Kaluga province in the Russian Empire ordered that 167 of his representatives, known as the “heralds of liberty”, travel to every community in the area and ensure that relevant sections of the recently enacted Emancipation statues be read and interpreted “correctly”. Written edicts were meant to bring the large Russian empire into closer alignment, juridically, and this ambitious remaking of the social landscape rightly encountered resistance from those who based their lived reality on oral conceptions that, by their very nature, resisted homogenizing efforts documentary technologies asserted. Both issuer and recipient of the edict perceived the assertion of a dualist conception that had to be reconciled. This leads us to questions concerning the transformative nature of ideas and the disruptive effects their ontological assertion of one verified reality over another can bring
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