World History in 60 Seconds: How Bank Imperial Re-Edited Russian Binary Logic

Abstract

Contemporary Russian culture's biggest problem is not westernisation, popification or rampant social impoverishment, but the stubborn aversion to counting past three. There is some sort of sick fascination with binary oppositions. Ever since the destruction of pagan worship 1000 years ago, the Holy dialectical triad has damned Russian culture. All attempts at modernisation are stifled by grandiose plans based on binary models of cultural dynamism that, after an initial expulsion of energy, eventually stagnate and spoil more than they transform. Moreover, there is little opportunity for multiple modes of analysis since most studies privilege the same destructive dialectics that they seek to examine. Everything is locked into a violent oppositional mentality that suffocates change, and only leads to new and improved methods of oppression and social degradation. All of Russia's other problems stem from this mathematical myopia. Within the relatively new field of Kulturology (Russian Cultural Studies) and the relatively forgotten field of Russian Philosophy (not philosophy in Russia) there have been few attempts to explore moments of interconnection. Subsequently, Kulturology is presented as a natural progression of a dialectical continuum that is necessarily oppositional. There is a common assumption that scholars study texts by using specific critical strategies within disciplinary limits and not the other way round. That is, they do not explore or question their discipline through the study of tactical texts. The intention of this paper is not to contrast Kulturology to Russian Philosophy and Cultural Studies so as to come up with a more refined product, but to examine the relationship between their central epistemological concerns. Rather than applying them either singularly or coextensively in order to analyse a particular text, I will attempt to consider Kulturology and Russian Philosophy through the text of a contemporary Russian-made advertising campaign. Curiously, the commercial text and the critical disciplines share key discursive concerns that point to a shared contemporary cognitive logic. Their arithmetical articulation of the cognitive logic of the dynamics of Russian culture, structures of interpretation and the construction of cultural history are the excessive focus of this paper.