Ideas and Ideals

In recent years, researchers around the world are increasingly turning to the problem of social alienation, which is caused not only by the coronavirus infection epidemic, but also by numerous other social and institutional processes. This article presents an overview and sociological analysis of foreign approaches to the study of social reclusion as a form of social alienation in religious, socio-philosophical, psychological, recreational, historical-cultural, spatial-geographical and economic-political discourses. Social reclusion is demonstrated both on well-known historical (reclusive poetess Emily Dickinson and others) and on modern cases. It was revealed that social reclusion can occur in relation to the whole society, certain social groups (for example, family) or institutions, as well as territories. Special attention is paid to home reclusion (solitude within the walls of your home) and green reclusion (solitude in nature). The author draws attention to the opposition of researchers of social reclusion and social exclusion, isolation, cultural participation and freedom. It is emphasized that social isolation is not identical with social reclusion, but can accompany it in conditions of limited social contacts, which confirms the phenomenon of A. Hansen’s reclusive openness. It has been established that the determinants of home reclusion can be the place of residence, moral and psychological state of a person, limited health opportunities in older people, visible physiological deficiencies or dependence on the screen (mainly among young people, which in Japan is called “hikikomori”). Guided by the dialectical idea of ​​the functionality of social reclusion, both its negative and positive aspects are shown, for example, the promotion of reintegration into society.

This article is dedicated to making sense of the cultural term “road” in research literature. Also, the author makes a disclosure of different “road” term interpretations in various scientific articles. The necessity of this analysis is contingent on terminological variety, which leads to problems while using terms even in one and the same article. In this article we are trying to highlight a dominant term for different fields of knowledge for the word “road”.

It turns out that in ethnologist articles specialists describe the road as an archetype, a mythologeme. The archetype of the road as a sort of spatial archetype appeared in the collective mind and outspoken in ethnic texts; traditions and rituals play an important role in the world view of different nations. Describing a road as a mythologeme allows to give it a sacral meaning, a road as a way to the “other world”, the borderland between ‘us’ and ‘them’, a dark place. In literary articles the road is viewed as chronotopos, assembling spatial and time relationship in literary texts.

A number of researchers highlight that the “road” chronotopos as a storyline creator and organizer is reflected in Russian literature of XIX-XXI centuries and act independently in the texts of different periods and different authors.

The analysis of the road as a metaphor can also be found in linguistic research. Authors suggest different ways of metaphorization, such as “way of life/way of death”, “way of perception”, “way of work”, “way of salvation/way of sin”, “way of creation/way of destruction”. The culturological method permits the authors to look at the road as a concept and divine the terms “road” and “way”. Within philosophy of culture a “road” had a meaning of a cultural universal relevant to different cultures, world models: mythological, religious, philosophical, artistical. Art science makes an accent on characteristic art’s image of the road.

The article concludes about the importance of the phenomenon of the road as an integral part of culture at all stages of its development, as well as a fairly thorough study of the road as a cultural phenomenon, the formation of various conceptual schemes for its description in the domestic research literature.

The subject of research in this article is the study of the genre areas of representation of the army as a socio-cultural institution in video games. To solve the research problems, methods such as classification were used to determine the main options for the representation of the army in video games, a structural-functional method to identify the media characteristics of games, forecasting to identify the prospects for a genre and ideological shift in military video games. As a result of the study, it was found that modern personalized war games are shifting from the era of the Second World War deeper into the past - for example, to the First World War or the Middle Ages, and their ideological content and content are also changing - from the linear fulfillment of a tactical task to a detailed narrative that reveals tragedy and heroism of military conflicts. According to the author, an important aspect of the success of military-patriotic education and the pragmatics of video games in the context of modern Russian culture is not just setting the task of creating games that glorify our military past, but also regulating the image of the Russian army today. A tool for this can be simulators of everyday activities, adventure games about the everyday life of border guards, signalmen, submariners on a campaign, managers of a military unit. Their potential is able to demonstrate the army as an institution for maintaining peace and ensuring security. The author assumes that such a genre experiment in military video games will make it possible to popularize Russian military video games on the market. In the conclusions of the study, 4 genres of army representation in video games are presented, in which the ideological paradigm is built around personal heroism or team genius, as well as personal exclusivity in extreme circumstances of military operations. The latter is formed by the very genre nature of video games, genre is message. The author revealed that the dominant genre is the action shooter, due to which the connection between the army and the categories of peace and security is lost and the categorical picture of the world created by the games of the military genre is distorted. The identified genre shift is destructive in nature, as it is aimed at destroying the socio-cultural institutions of the army.

This article presents the results of a hermeneutic analysis of the work of British designer Alexander McQueen. Corporeality is a system of signs applied to the human body. Clothing is the most important part of corporeality constructed by designers. An outfit is an ensemble of clothing elements that is an artistic statement. McQueen was aware of the overload of the body with symbolic meanings. His task as a designer was to construct a fashionable corporeality, which means controlling body parts with vestimental tools - silhouette, material, colour, fit, etc. McQueen’s aesthetic program is problematized through the image of the “strong woman”. The author analyzes the meaning put into the concept by the designer. The conceptual heroines of McQueen’s work inhabit the extremes of logocentric society: prostitutes, saints, aristocrats, the mentally ill and others.

The analysis is produced in the context of other concepts of the “strong woman” created by European, American and Japanese designers. It is noted and emphasized that the conceptual heroines of McQueen’s work inhabit the extremes of logocentric society: prostitutes, saints, aristocrats, the mentally ill and others. One exists in the lower zone (vampires, witches, criminals, etc.), while others, like Joan of Arc and Catherine the Great, find themselves at the very peak of the male order, contradicting its structure by their existence. The loneliness of Alexander McQueen’s women, settled on social points of extremity, correlates little with the usual images of strong women broadcast by contemporary culture.

The author hypothesizes that McQueen creates the image of a strong woman through the construction of a “doomed” and “prominent” corporeality, which is most precisely expressed in the concept of “martyr”. By constructing images of strong heroines, McQueen invented a woman who does not undermine the logocentric order, but strengthens it thanks to her flexibility and adaptability to any circumstances. A woman is thus a “substitute man”, solving those problems that men fail to cope with.

The main concepts of the article are discourse and instances of delineation. This is a set of social institutions that can form the structure of discourse, identify its main and secondary segments. The aim of the research is identification of the instances of delineation in the discourse of rock-culture. The methods of this research included narrative interviews with agents of rock-culture and discourse-analysis. Agents of rock-culture are musicians, their close friends, collector of discs, fans. The research allows us to draw the following conclusions. In the discourse of rock-culture the role of such institutions is fulfilled by a friend, a senior member of family, media and music shops. The friend that structures the discourse should have authority and prestige. They define aesthetic positions, give assessments and exert informational impact. A friend can influence both temporarily and permanently. A senior member of the family affects the discourse in the same way. Other instances of delineation are media and music shops. Media has the effect in rock-discourse of setting the agenda. Methods of forming the agenda are nomination of facts and rankings. A music shop organizes conversation between different agents of rock-culture. A shop operates like media. It provides positive nomination segments of discourse: the demanded goods create a certain verbal series influencing a visitor of the shop. A visitor enters a certain context that leads them to perceive themselves as a referent product that can further the thesaurus of the subject. The structure of the discourse formation is determined by the institutions that act both in the public and in the private field of cultural being. The public instances of delineation are media and musical shops (or market in the reality of Soviet culture). So the discourse of rock performs a double function. It introduces the subject into the sphere of social and cultural innovations. At the same time rock that has a private character returns one to cultural traditions.

The article considers various aspects of the existence of clip thinking and its individual gestalts. Corresponding study looks quite relevant in the context of an actual philosophical agenda, since the current cultural situation decisively affects not only the practical thought algorithms of a modern person, but also the transformation of the structures of Reason as such. Actually, a modern person, as a subject of specific thinking, first of all, demonstrates the narcissistic nature of his/her identity, which is revealed in certain stable intellectual patterns. These patterns include the idea of ​​a person’s existence as a series of events of appropriation of everything that was captured by this existence, the idea of ​​the automaticity of the onset of the human right to be heard, the idea of ​​the possibility of deriving direct references to an individual’s personal experience as a universal transcendental basis and the idea of ​​the inalienable right of a person not to follow the discovered “truth” at will. The most important gestalt of clip thinking, functioning in the horizon of its essential qualities and narcissistic patterns, is post-truth. The very appeal to the concept of post-truth is a statement of the prevailing clear order in the modern world of a situation where on the one hand truth is always less important than the private comfort of a narcissistic personality, and on the other hand truth is no longer significant for the acting sociocultural practices. Among the most significant circumstances accompanying the action of post-truth as a gestalt, it needs to pay attention to the following. First, post-truth can be considered as one of the markers of the actualization of the desire for social escapism, which is characteristic of a modern man. Secondly, the phenomenon of post-truth is inextricably linked with the widespread dissemination of ideas that for any cognitive difficulty somewhere there is an appropriate operational algorithm that resolves all difficulties. Third, post-truth works as the organizing principle of the global meme space. Fourthly, post-truth is an important aspect of that each time anew initiated culture shock, which acts as a practical mechanism for “switching on” clip thinking and “switching” its acts. It can be concluded that the study of the mechanisms of the post-truth gestalt and the related aspects of the existence of clip thinking makes it possible to deepen the understanding of many relevant processes occurring in the modern sociocultural space.

This article presents the research results of Jaque Lacan’s ethics of psychoanalysis. Lacan suggested both the new theory of desire and the new ethics which is motivated by a desire as a criterion of an action.

In this article the author reconstructs the Lacan’s system of arguments, which proves the fact, that desire can be considered as a criterion of an action, not its motive. This paper shows that the ethics of desire, that was originally developed in relation to the problem of the criterion of an analytical act, is also important for the ethical position of the patient, and therefore can be presented as a universal ethic.

The article also provides evidence that psychoanalytic work can be considered as an ethical practice, since there is a transformation of the ethical position of the patient in it. Initially, the patient takes an ethical position that can be defined as the desire to achieve the good, it would lead the subject to satisfaction, comfort and tranquility. On the other hand, psychoanalysis reveals a different ethical perspective to the patient, where the desire defines how the patient chooses the path.

First of all, this is about the analyst’s desire. This term means a special formation that was resulted by the analyst’s own analysis. Lacan believed that a psychoanalyst is the result of his/her own analysis, one of the main effects of which is the analyst’s desire. The analyst’s desire serves as a criterion for the analyst to perform analytical acts in his/her psychoanalytic practice.

But the ethics of desire is important not only for the psychoanalyst. The author’s task is to show that a patient who came to the analysis for the sake of therapy also performs the transformation of an ethical position in the process of analysis. This is the basic condition of psychoanalytic therapy. The main purpose of psychoanalysis is the study of unconscious desire, as a result of which the patient becomes an analysand and gets the opportunity to face his/her desire and follow it. To follow the desire means to decide to abandon the perspective of satisfaction and to bet on what is opposed to peace and completeness, and what can be defined as life.

Тhe meaning of visual representation includes perception of information through the visual image. This form of information delivery to the general public was known in pagan cultures and asserted itself in Christianity. Since the late 20th century the concept of visualization united in itself not only religious and artistic images, but also the vision of mass culture. The performed research places emphasis on the establishment and the development of visual representation in Russia’s art culture of the ХVIII-XIX centuries. During the reign of Peter the Great, in a succession of state reforms and due to the influence of samples of European art, a transformation of national art culture occured. In this context, maritime art is viewed as one of the visual representation forms. The seascape, as a separate genre of painting, originates in the Dutch landscape. The first marinas were brought by Peter the 1st to decorate palaces and country residences. The victory in the Battle of Chesme (1770) and the joining of Crimea to the Russian Empire prompted Catherine the 2nd to invite J. P. Hackert to perpetuate the glory of Russian weapons. The artist became the first marine painter on Russian soil and performed a series of twelve paintings.

The flourishing of the national seascape in Russia took place in the 19th century. The first who took the post of artist at the Ministry of the Sea was I.K. Aivazovsky. Since then the seascape acquired special significance and perpetuates the sea victories of Russia. A subtle metaphysical meaning is present in some romantic landscapes by I.K. Aivazovsky. Sea battle paintings acquired clear realistic features in the painting of A.P. Bogolyubov. The artists are concerned not only with the image of the sea, but also with the architecture of the ship, which forms a separate painting genre: the ship portrait genre. The image of the ship in the paintings of the XIX-XX centuries combines the lines of scripture and poetry, focusing the attention of the viewer on a deep semantic reading of the landscape.

The article is dedicated to ocean liners, the ambitious projects of the 1930s. The Interwar period was the golden age of transatlantic shipping, primarily due to technical improvements, for example, increased engine power and changes in ship hull shape. However from an artistic point of view, liners also proved to be an important field of application. Many European architects, sculptors, and decorators were involved in the design of the exterior of the liners and their interiors. Most of the masters who participated in the development of a special “liner style” were practitioners of art deco. The spectacular, varied art deco proved to be the most appropriate style, corresponding to the problems which had been set before the artists by the client companies. The subject of the research is to identify the relationship between the “liner style” of the 1930s and art deco, determining the place of the transatlantic liner projects in the culture of the XX century. The object of the research is the design conceptions in general, as well as works of art in the interiors of the liners. The author’s aim is to demonstrate the high importance of these projects for the understanding of the Art Deco era, to characterize the complex approach of masters to the design of liner exteriors and interiors, to consider and compare the most outstanding design solutions. The research methodology includes historical and descriptive, comparative methods, cultural, historical, and culturological approaches. The main attention in the article is given to the French “Normandy”, a recognized example of this style. To expand the context and the possibility of generalization, the focus is also made on two English liners: “Queen Mary” and “Queen Elizabeth”. Among the artists the author points special attention to a French master, Jean Dunant. Dunant’s panels made for the Normandy cigar lounge are considered examples of a decorative style, inspired by the exoticism of archaic or Oriental cultures.

The paper is devoted to Value Sensitive Design (VSD). This approach, widely presented in foreign scientific and specialized literature, has not been reflected in the Russian-language discourse. The authors of the study consider the theoretical foundations and methodological tools of VSD, clarify the conceptual apparatus, and also carry out a critical analysis of some of its main provisions (in particular, the question is raised about the absence of a philosophical theory of values, the eclecticism of the modern approach, insufficiently developed methods of cooperation with engineers, designers and potential stakeholders). VSD is viewed in the context of technology assessment and socially responsible innovation. We are talking about a diverse set of practices for the rational shaping of technologies, taking into account the values of society, suggesting a more active and conscious involvement of ordinary citizens (not experts) in the discussion of issues related to the development and design of technologies. An understanding of values with an emphasis on ethics and morality raises the question of achieving a balance between competing values and choosing the desired values, taking into account the diversity of interests of direct and indirect stakeholders. In this regard, two main goals of the VSD stand out. On the one hand, it involves identifying and critically analyzing desirable or limiting values that have been (intentionally or unintentionally) inscribed into existing technologies. On the other hand, VSD offers practical recommendations on how to deliberately and purposefully inscribe socially approved values into the design of new equipment, software, databases, and algorithms. Finally, the article defines the directions of possible applied research: (a) the development of the theory and methodology of change management through structuring the change management process according to the hierarchical principle of interaction, as well as identifying persons and groups that are affected by organizational changes and how; (b) fundamental aspects of human-machine interaction, in particular, human-robot interaction (HRI), which is of great practical importance for the design and production of socially responsible service robotics.