Cultural Crisis Research Articles

Философско-религиозные предпосылки становления абстрактного искусства

The subject of this study is the philosophical and religious background of abstractionism in the visual arts. The purpose of this article is to analyze the influence of the philosophical views of A. Bergson and religious practices on the work of the founders of abstract. Given the complexity and ambiguity of the topic of the article, the following methodological approach was taken: not only artistic, but also theoretical works of the most prominent figures of abstractionism were analyzed: V. Kandinsky, K. Malevich, P. Mondrian. A theoretical review of studies on the problem of the crisis in art and abstractionism as a reaction to it is presented. The article used the methods of interpretation, hermeneutics, the comparative method, which was used to study the worldviews recorded in the artistic and theoretical works of abstractionists, the semiotic method, the axiological method in the analysis of the values of the cultural crisis of the early XX century, and the analytical method was used in the processing of research literature. The work involved an interdisciplinary approach that focuses on the study of abstractionism as a multidimensional phenomenon. The scientific novelty of this study lies in the fact that in the article for the first time the works of the above-mentioned artists were considered through the prism of the philosophy of life and intuitionism of A. Bergson, as well as religious and spiritual practices (shamanism, Taoism, ancient Greek mythology, Christianity and theosophy), elements of which were used by artists-abstractionists in their paintings. It was concluded that abstract art is characterized by the desire to break with artistic tradition, conflict with time, rejection of unambiguity, the desire to express oneself as much as possible, the cult of creative protest, contradiction and experiment, which led to formal and conceptual innovation, the formation of a new artistic consciousness under the influence of these philosophical and religious ideas.

On the Phenomenological Reality of Monsters

On the Phenomenological Reality of Monsters

Мунье Эмманюэль

The article is devoted to the work of Emmanuel Mounier (1905–1950), the founder and leading theorist of the philosophy of French personalism. The philosopher sees the purpose of his teaching in finding a way out of a deep civilizational crisis, in which, in his opinion, by the beginning of the twentieth century, human society found itself. He seeks to find ways to comprehend a qualitatively new civilization based on the effective priority of spiritual values. The central idea in the thinker's views is transcension as a fundamental property of a human personality, overcoming mechanistic connections and conditionalities and striving for "super-being". He also referred to the feeling of human community as the main characteristics of human existence: society was initially included in his definition of personality. The personalist philosopher attached special importance to art in the process of becoming a person. The ideas of personalism by E. Mounier and his associates (J. Lacroix, M. Nedonsel et al.) had a noticeable influence on the philosophical, sociological and aesthetic teachings of the twentieth century, orienting researchers to study the problems of the spiritual content of human activity, human communication, and human community. They became the theoretical basis of a number of areas of theological thought — theology of personality, theology of labor, theology of revolution, theology of liberation.

ECOLOGICAL SPIRITUALITY FOR A “NEW HUMANISM”: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM TEILHARD DE CHARDIN AND POPE FRANCIS

Researchers from different fields argue that civilization has unsustainable projects and has reached extreme limits in its evolutionary trajectory. One aggravating factor, among others, is the dramatic environmental crisis. Considering this situation, the research intends to off er clues for the blossoming of a new planetary consciousness to be cultivated in the form of an ecological spirituality. That’s why it's crucial to know, at first in a succinct way, the civilizational imbalance that the Covid-19 pandemic has uncovered. Next, we turn to Teilhard de Chardin who speaks of "critical points" in the course of the evolutionary process. They signal the birth of something new, topic two. The third and fourth topics are dedicated to the contributions of Teilhard de Chardin and Pope Francis, respectively, to the deepening of a spirituality that responds to the ecological crisis and, consequently, inspires a new humanism. The most significant result of the research points to the discovery of the underlying mystical perspective in Laudato si'.
 KEYWORDS: Teilhard de Chardin. Pope Francis. Crisis of Civilization. Ecological Spirituality. New humanism.

Kūnas krikščionybėje remiantis kūniškumo krize šiuolaikinėje kultūroje

Relevance of the topic. The article is devoted to the meanings and practises of the body in Christian culture and the issue of preserving and continuing this tradition in contemporary culture. Since it is about the semantic contexts of the body, the article uses the phenomenological method in combination with hermeneutic analysis. The authors consistently deploy several logical lines. The first line is related to the description of such a direction as hesychasm, its practises and attitude to the body. At the same time, the ethical potential of hesychasm and the pathos of physicality as an instrument of morality are emphasised. The second line revolves around the practical attitude to the body in modern culture: the preservation of the Christian tradition, the natural characteristics of the body, and understanding the meaning of the body. The third line is connected with the loss of the “sanctity” of the body and the unawareness of this loss on the part of the common citizen and, as a result, the erosion of the ethical and natural meaning of the body. According to the authors, history will show how terrible these changes in meaning can be. The “distortion” of the meaning of the body in modern cultures makes it possible to emphasise the emergence of the phenomenon of unconsciousness of paradoxical events, the enormity of the consequences of which few people still understand. The problem. Today, the events that unfold around the topic of the corporeal directly and indirectly touch on the topic of human relations and, as a result, there is a need to once again talk about the role and significance of the body in the Christian tradition and about the consequences of ignoring the biblical commandments in modern everyday life. The purpose. To clarify the meanings of the corporeal, based on the tradition of hesychasm. Research object. The role and significance of the body in the Christian tradition and about the consequences of ignoring the biblical commandments in modern everyday life. Results. In the article, it was shown that the body and its meaning have a special ethical pathos because its understanding was formed under the enormous influence of Christianity, which laid the foundations for the formation of the context of the general civilisational development of mankind. Modern culture “distorts” the meaning of the body, and the actual material of sports competitions makes it possible to record the phenomenon of unawareness in most people that there is a departure from universal values (this is what is called a crisis of culture). History moves in such a way that sometimes it is impossible to trace the trajectories of its development. And yet, despite the incomprehensible lines of development, does the question of the relationship with the Absolute remain relevant for a man? If the Christian meanings of the body fade into the background of life, then what other religion will be able to promote the ideas of ethics and morality? Keywords. Hesychasm, Christian tradition, meanings of the body, transgender, sports competitions, the pathos of the body, contemporary culture.

Husserl and the “Shrapnel” of War: Origins of Reflections on the Crisis of European Culture

hipótese formulada pelo presente artigo consiste em mostrar que o fenômeno da PrimeiraGuerra Mundial foi decisivo nos rumos do itinerário de Edmund Husserl no século XX. A partir dessefenômeno e dos impactos que o mesmo produziu na vida pessoal de Husserl, nota-se um interessecrescente do autor pelas reflexões no campo da cultura, obrigando-o a desenvolver suas primeirasconsiderações sobre a temática da crise do homem europeu. O artigo possui duas partes: a primeiradelas é dedicada ao contexto da guerra e aos seus impactos no pensamento de Husserl, ao passo que asegunda concentra-se sobre as célebres “Lições sobre Fichte”, ministradas pelo autor em 1917-1918,ainda sob os estilhaços e ruídos produzidos pela guerra.

Dreaming in the Digital Age

This article explores one way of understanding how digital media are affecting our ability to distinguish reality from fantasy, by reading Bernard Stiegler’s diagnosis of our current cultural crisis, alongside Wilfred Bion’s dream theory. The central claim of the paper is that we can understand the technological pharmakon¬, its both poisonous and therapeutic nature, (specifically of digitized audiovisual communication) in terms of Bion’s definition of dreaming, as the commerce between consciousness and the unconscious (responsible for spontaneity, invention, and the constitution of meaning) negotiated by the “alpha function”. Understanding how the digital impacts our capacity to dream provides us with a tool to counteract its toxicity and to combat the thanatic impulse triggered by technological power. From a binocular point of view – both from Stiegler’s perspective of our technical or “organological” evolution and from Bion’s perspective on the constitution of reality in dreaming – we can begin to see more clearly how to modulate our technological drive, in order to prevent the pharmakon from short-circuiting the very psychic function necessary to distinguish between reality and illusion. The paper ends with a discussion of the algorithmic effects on the living imagination in support of this contention.

Influencer’s era–the role of experts in the digital world. Do we still need their forecasts and advice?

Influencer’s era–the role of experts in the digital world. Do we still need their forecasts and advice? We live in an information society. Estimates show that by 2025 global data production will increase to over 180 zettabytes. Along with the dissemination of the Internet, the development of digital communication and the reduction of digital exclusion, we are facing a serious crisis of expert culture. Over the years, it is experts who played an important role in society, today we ask where the border between professionals and specialists with specific knowledge, and experts-soremen, who gather hundreds of thousands of thousands of users in front of the screens of mobile devices in front of the screens of mobile devices in front of the screens of mobile devices. In the course of consideration of the above issues, the authors decided to develop a new expert definition based on a review of literature together with the use of the syncretic method and the original research model. The latter was successfully used in previous studies. As part of the considerations on the indicated issues, the authors focus on four key phenomena: Influencer marketing development–as a new variety of the so -called expert sector; virtual exhibitionism in the context of surveillance capitalism; functioning of the expert sector in the Bigdata era; The role of experts- futurists reaching for the models of forecasting the future. Is there still room for experts in the thicket of data? The answer to this question is the key to defining who the expert of the future will be.

Logoprophylaxis in the face of crisis of adolescence

This study addresses the problem of the adolescent crisis from the perspective of logoprophylaxis, i.e. preventive actions referring to logotherapy and existential analysis of V. E. Frankel. The concept of this Viennese researcher and physician, due to its anchoring in philosophy and due to Frankl's own traumatic experiences, is nowadays applied to the understanding of various phenomena of human life or crises of contemporary culture. The authors - referring to logotherapy - argue that adolescence generally has a crisis course and that this is a phenomenon characteristic of every family system and upbringing environment, but that this crisis is also related to the social potential of values and ideals expressed, for example, through religion or culture. This poses a challenge for educators, pedagogues or psychologists working with young people, as many educational problems and disorders are linked to the crisis nature of adolescence and thus to the social ways in which values are transmitted. It is pointed out that the crisis of adolescence has a bivalent character. On the one hand, it has developmental potential, so that the resolution of such a crisis opens up new possibilities for the young person and leads to greater maturity. However, a crisis at this age is also fraught with risks and the possibility of pathologising development, due to unfulfilled developmental tasks, difficult life situations, psychological trauma or illness. An understanding of crisis in logotherapy terms is discussed, with a particular focus on the role of existential frustration. The authors argue that adolescent crisis can also be understood as a kind of existential crisis. Thus, a crisis relating to problems concerning life goals, value conflicts, choices made, or experiencing the meaning of life. It has been reasoned that logoprophylaxis provides a good conceptual apparatus for understanding this type of crisis and can make use of one of the main protective factors against the adverse course of an adolescent crisis - a sense of meaning. The application of logoprophylaxis to problems of adolescence has been demonstrated, as a developmental period associated with the search for worldview resolution and the definition of personal values. The strategy of providing existentially meaningful experiences was presented as an example of logoprophylactic strategies. The article also argues that logoprophylactic measures can support the process of upbringing, since a crisis in the life of an adolescent is usually associated with problematic experiences of the meaning of life and disorientation in the sphere of values.

100th anniversary of Anton Chekhov’s death in Barcelona

The interest towards Anton Chekhov’s theatre entered a new phase in the end of the seventies of the 20th century in Barcelona. A quarter of century after Franco’s death the translations of Chekhov’s plays into Catalan and representations thereof recorded a new growth: translators and artists were trying to fill the gap resulting from the cultural crisis suffered under the dictatorship by introducing into the national cultural system some of the most recognized authors of the world, already considered classics in the western neighbour countries (France, Great Britain, Germany). The 100th anniversary of Chekhov’s death offered a perfect occasion to pay tribute to the Russian author’s memory. The present research sums up the principal events dedicated to the centenary of Chekhov’s death in 2004 in Barcelona and focuses on the staging of “Uncle Vanya” by Joan Ollé, one of the most memorable interpretations of this play in Catalonia, in order to evaluate the reception thereof through the analysis of periodical issues. Based on Hans-Robert Jauss’s approach to the literature as a constant interaction between the work of art, the public and the author, the study sheds light on the reception of Chekhov’s theatre in Catalonia and its evolution from the first direct translation of the play until a key staging which, in turn, became a reference for the following generations. The analysis concludes that the centenary of Chekhov’s death may be considered an inflection point in the history of his reception in Catalonia. Thanks to the production of the first canonical staging of “Uncle Vanya” in Catalan, Chekhov’s name stopped being associated exclusively with popular performances produced by foreign companies.

Cultural distortion risks at heritage sites: Scale development and validation

Cultural risk measurement is an urgent theoretical and practical issue related to cultural sustainability of heritage sites. This research conducted rigorous scale development of cultural distortion risk at heritage sites (CDRHS) with four stages. The results further emphasize the risk prediction direction of cultural crisis. Validated with three dimensions and 12 items, the CDRHS scale has high-level and convergent, construct, and discriminant validity. The scale is confirmed with three constructs: cultural ontology distortion risks, cultural representation distortion risks, and cultural constructive distortion risks. Moreover, the ‘risk-trust-intention’ negative influence framework indicates that CDRHS has a significant negative effect on tourists' behavioral intention. This research highlights the structural dimension of the CDRHS scale, presenting a new measurement tool and methodological contribution to cultural sustainability of heritage sites. It provides indicators and diagnostic tools for timely prediction and supervision of cultural crises.

St. Benedict: a response to the crisis of faith and culture in Europe according to Pope Benedict XVI

Toward the end of Cardinal Ratzinger’s mandate as the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he reflected upon the crisis of faith and culture in Europe and its causes, particularly the refusal by European Union ruling classes to put God’s name in the new European Constitution or acknowledge Europe’s Christian roots. Moreover, his writings reveal a personal and thoughtful approach to Benedictine monasticism and St. Benedict as a model for the spiritual renewal of Europe. The aim of this paper is to analyze places in Joseph Ratzinger’s works as a theologian, and later as Pope Benedict XVI, on the importance of imitating St. Benedict and studying his testimonies in response to Europe’s current crisis of faith and culture. Analyzing the Enlightenment culture that led to the secularist understanding of a Europe in which the place for faith is only found through political compromise and a tolerance of faith as long as it remains on the margins of social action, rather than serving as the spiritual driving force, Pope Benedict sees Europe’s fundamental disorder in the reductionism of the Enlightenment, in which reason is limited to empirical positivism. The ultimate consequence is the loss of the foundations of public morality, the negation of human dignity and the loss of freedom in a dictatorship of relativism that contradicts the fundamental starting points of the Enlightenment—namely, the desire for open-mindedness to the whole of reality in which God is encountered as the basis of all that exists, true humanity, open to true freedom through obedience to the Word of God, and the restoration of the foundation of democracy.

Tijana Vuković, Regaining the Yugoslav Heritage vs. Culture Crisis Regaining the Past. Yugoslav Legacy in the Period of Transition: The Case of Formal and Alternative Institutions of Art and Culture in Serbia at the End of the 20th and the Beginning of the 21st Century, Warsaw–Bellerive-sur-Allier, Wydawnictwo DiG 2022, pp. 343

Tijana Vuković, Regaining the Yugoslav Heritage vs. Culture Crisis Regaining the Past. Yugoslav Legacy in the Period of Transition: The Case of Formal and Alternative Institutions of Art and Culture in Serbia at the End of the 20th and the Beginning of the 21st Century, Warsaw–Bellerive-sur-Allier, Wydawnictwo DiG 2022, pp. 343

ПОСТМОДЕРНІЗМ – ОСНОВНІ ІДЕЇ ТА ЇХ СУСПІЛЬНО-ПОЛІТИЧНІ ІМПЛІКАЦІЇ

The purpose of the article is to show the causal relationship between the philosophical ideas of postmodernism, as well as its cultural expression and the socio-political situation of the modern West, which the author of the article describes as a civilizational decline. The article examines the context of the emergence of postmodernism as the dominant worldview today in the Western world, as well as its main philosophical ideas, such as deconstruction, transgression, anti-logocentrism, loss of trust in metanarratives, skepticism in relation to the concept of truth, moral relativism, and others. The author of the article examines the evolution of postmodernism, which has taken place over the past half century, passing from academia, through various spheres of culture to political activism and the lives of ordinary people. The article places special emphasis on the consequences of postmodern ideas in the social and political life of the West. In this context, the phenomenon of post-truth politics, the sexual revolution, the political polarization of societies, social engineering and, in general, the crisis of Euro-Atlantic civilization are analyzed. Postmodernism is seen as the decadence of European culture. In the conclusion, the context of the war and state-building in Ukraine and the connection of their prospects with the spiritual and civilizational condition of the West appears.

Cultural Crisis, Deteriorating Heritage, and Placemaking: A Study of Rural West Bengal, India

‘Culture’ denotes the co-shared beliefs, values, ethos, norms, lifeworlds, and activities commonly represent nature-culture reciprocity. In several remote areas of India, folk culture still breaths within its age-old life world. Against this backdrop, the southwestern part of West Bengal, also known as ‘Jangal Mahal’ has been studied in the present research. In this area, approximately 40% of the population directly depends on indigenous sources of livelihood, and they belong to tribal communities like Mahato, Kurmi, Lodha, Santal, Bauri, and others. These native people are culturally distinct and are identified through their folksongs and dance forms, such as Tusu, Kirtan, Baul, Bhadu, and folk dances, such as Chhau, Khati, etc. However, urban spaces and citizens’ choices for entertainment have brought about considerable changes in the culture and life of these people. Resultantly, with the increasing pace, deterioration in the heritage and culture of such groups seems to set in. Thus, this study highlights the changing scenarios of cultural crises, deteriorating heritage values, and placemaking. We have followed participatory methods, including field observation, interviews and group discussions. And a door-to-door survey was conducted in the 12 villages of four districts with a semi-structured survey schedule. Sixty troupes were selected for interview and Focused Group Discussions (FGDs). The findings show that values and cultural practices change over time, thereby losing their identity. The placemaking of popular culture results in a deep crisis in livelihood and lifestyle. People are slowly adopting other modes of earning, which further threaten their culture. This study aims to suggest suitable ameliorative measures to preserve the pristine cultural art forms and safeguard livelihood and skill sets.

Antinomic Understanding of the Secular in Georges Florovsky's Works

The present article analyses the approach of Georges Florovsky to the problem of the secular (worldly, earthly, immanent). Georges Florovsky gave the secular tendencies in the Christian world a negative assessment as they led to cultural crises. He proposed to seek their origin in the antinomic (God–human, both earthly and heavenly) nature of the Christian church. He deduced that the origins of secular culture stemmed forth from the medieval attempts to break this antinomy, to create Heaven on Earth. This could be seen in the Byzantine Empire (the subordination of the Church to the Emperor), in the Latin world (the assignment of secular power to the Pope), in the European post-Reformation thought (through the blurring of the distinction between theology and de-Christianized philosophy), and later in the Russian religious philosophy (attempts to formulate the idea of Christian state). Drawing on the concept of the divine-human antinomy of the Church, Georges Florovsky insisted that the Church should neither try to blur the line between the religious and the secular, nor attempt to influence secular politics, but should instead proceed from the fact that culture is intrinsically religious and substantially theologized. In fact, he objected to the ecclesiasticization of politics and offered to proceed from the assumption that Christianity (religion) is universal by default. Florovsky used a dual, dialectical approach in which secular discourse is seen as a religious discourse that aspires to secular power and consequently ceases to be religious, creating a kind of secular culture that threatens Christianity itself. In order to overcome this secular culture, Christianity is called upon to abstain from direct political influence on it. While avoiding limitations of the religious–secular du-alism of the Enlightenment and allowing the Church thought to prevent aggravating relations with secular politics, this approach fails to properly distinguish between the causes and the effects of secular discourse. The conclusion identifies ways of furthering Florovsky's approach and thought.

Towards Transformation of the Nigerian Youths: The Place of Yoruba Popular Music

Since the year 2012, West Africans, especially the Nigerian government and citizens have been witnessing an increase in civil crisis because of different crimes committed in African society and the involvement of the youths in these negative activities. Since music is said to have an emotional and psychological influence on human minds, this paper, therefore, examines the text content of and relevance of popular music in Nigerian society and highlights the role played by popular musicians as agents for positive transformation of the youths among the Southwestern part of Nigeria. Relying on Femi Adedeji’s Transformation musicological theory, this work explicates the song themes and other lyrical contents of selected popular music in the Yoruba language fashioned towards positive transformative direction, for the purpose of socio-cultural analysis. The research findings show that some Nigerian popular musicians have for over three decades, been making use of the message in their music to sustain the positive transformation of lives and behavior of people of Nigeria, especially the youths. The song lyrics by the old juju, fuji, apala, sakara, and Pop musicians are found to be more effective because of the Yoruba cultural concepts and moral values inherent in them. This essay concludes that music has an affective mechanism that positively influences the lives, personalities, and world-views of Nigerian youths in general if properly channeled towards a positive dimension. This paper concludes that the Nigerian government should use appropriate agencies like the National Film and Records Censor Board and Nigerian Copyright Council to prevent music that contains lyrics that can encourage violence and criminal acts circulated into Nigerian markets.

Social aspects of manifestations of regional identity in toponymic nicknames

The article is devoted to an actual problem that reflects a clearly visible crisis of communicative culture, which hides a deeper conflict of social values, manifested in the breakdown of patterns formed in the past, standards of action in specific situations of communication between representatives of different ethnic groups, cultures, confessions, etc. A surge in the birth of new ethnopholisms, acting as the most expressive ethnonyms, coincided with the rise to a new level of hate speech, in which the most diverse socially colored nicknames turn into a powerful tool for political stigmatization of any persons or communities that are different from the subject of this process.The study of such a phenomenon is interdisciplinary in nature and is impossible without knowledge of the facts of history, culture, language, economic life of different ethnic groups. The study of ethnopholisms in the form of toponymic nicknames allows us to find out the reasons for the ambivalent attitude towards the trend of regionalization, when, on the one hand, it is under pressure from the same social, economic, political and spiritual processes that caused the collapse of global projects, however, on the other hand, the proximity of regional actions to local conditions, provides a basis for predicting the possibility, through the strengthening of identity, to create both a stronger socio-economic basis for the development of regional communities, and to find a new model for their interaction in the global space.

Conrad, Lawrence, and the Sabotage and Salvage of Genre

Abstract This article considers Joseph Conrad's Nostromo and D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love as modernist reworkings of the industrial novels of the mid-nineteenth century, such as Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton and Charles Dickens's Hard Times. Conrad and Lawrence, the article argues, rework the industrial-novel genre as a way to figure a crisis of British culture—and of the novel as a form. In the era of British imperial decline, the apparent massification and globalization of modern Western culture, and revolutionary changes in gender relations and family life, the synoptic historical narratives of Nostromo and Women in Love describe the transformation of the earlier promise of development into an apocalyptic present, and, in turn, the dissolution of the progressive assurance of the realist novel. While the nineteenth-century novels plead for reform and paternalistic care to moderate but protect the free market and liberalism, Nostromo and Women in Love narrate precisely the historical fulfillment of this wish—but, then, in turn, also narrate the end of that reformist logic and the triumph of a fully globalized and “perfected” capitalism, which they characterize as worse than the free-market capitalism that the earlier novels both criticize and celebrate. Drawing on Marxist-feminist theories of “social reproduction,” the article describes especially how the modernist novels imagine the family as a machine for maintaining and servicing capitalist production: the regeneration of the family—a trope so important to the resolution of plot in the realist novel—is now a sign of decay instead of resilience.

THE PROSPECTS AND THE FORECASTS OF A HUMAN TRANSFORMATION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CRISIS OF CULTURE BECAUSE OF THE CIVILIZATION DOMINANCE

The article is giving the opportunity to see the perspectives and the forecasts of human transformation in the paradigms of the conceptions of the transhumanism and the meta-anthropology. There is opened the question, what realities are existing for the humanity in the transition period from the postmodernism, when the era is changing to another one, how to save the cultural values of humanity in the context of the fast development of a new technologies and the dominance of civilization. The vectors and the reasoned alternatives for getting out of the cultural crisis are proposed.Key words: culture, civilization, man, transhumanism, H+, meta-anthropology, metanarratives, postmodern, meta-modern, existentials.