Book chapter
Творчество как практика выхода за границы реальности
The article shows the importance of philosophy Ricker for theoretical sociology. Perspectives of sociology associated with a combination of theories and theories of action events. Action theory developed in sociology and theory of events is not. Ricoeur philosophy - one of the possible intellectual resources in order to change this situation.
This collection of articles is devoted to the problems of philology, culture, philosophy and other humanitarian sciences which are of special interest now days.
Some texts written by me together with corresponding member of the Russian Academy of science Sergei P. Kurdyumov (1928-2004) and under his direct ideological influence are collected in the book. These texts are elaborated, systematized, brought together in the book and supplemented with new materials. Sergei P. Kurdyumov were possessed of a deep metaphysical flair and put forward ideas, the matter of which are not fully clear up to now. These are, first of all, the idea of co-evolution and the notion of complex structures developing at different tempos as co-existing tempo-worlds. Owing to developments in the field of nonlinear dynamics and of synergetics, the classical problem of time and the problems of evolutionary holism disclose some new and non-traditional aspects. The matter of new notions of nonlinearity of the course of time in the processes of evolution and coevolution and of nonlinear links between different modi of time – between the past, the present and the future - come to the light in the book. Analyses of four interconnected aspects of the course of processes in open and nonlinear dissipative systems – of evolutionarity, temporality, emergent nature and holism – are carried out. A whole series of paradoxical notions, such as “the influence of the future upon the present”, “the possibility of touch of a remote future in praesenti”, irreversibility and elements of reversibility of the course of time appear in synergetics, non-traditional and nonlinear notion of time being at the heart of all of them. It is shown that the best pictorial view of the nonlinear time is apparently the tree of evolution or the tree of time that represent one of archetypes in the human psyche. This image is widely used in myths and religious doctrines of the world nations (the tree of evolution of languages from some united parent language or the tree of evolution of biological species), the image is often drawn by children, appears in consciousness of a man in his sleep, etc. The synergetics methodology under development is applied to study of cognitive systems. The emergent structures of evolution and of self-organization of the individual consciousness, their spatiotemporal peculiarities, and the complexity of the human Self are considered in detail. The radical changes in the understanding of the problems of time that occur due to synergetics are compared with images of time and with the notions of connection between the past, the present and the future in the history of philosophy and of culture. The obtained methodological inferences are of great importance for a reform of systems of education, for forecasting (for building of scenarios of future development), for effective management activity in the modern globalizing world, for elaboration of methods of stimulation of the creative thinking, for the growth of personality and its adequate building into the social media.
Meaningful life is emotionally marked off. That’s the general point that Johansen (IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science 44, 2010) makes which is of great importance. Fictional abstractions use to make the point even more salient. As an example I’ve examined Borges’ famous fiction story. Along with the examples of Johansen it provides an informative case of exploring symbolic mechanisms which bind meaning with emotions. This particular mode of analysis draws forth poetry and literature in general to be treated as a “meaningful life laboratory”. Ways of explanation of emotional effect the art exercises on people, which had been disclosed within this laboratory, however, constitute a significant distinction in terms that I have designated as “referential” and “substantive”. The former appeals to something that has already been charged with emotional power, whereas the latter comes to effect by means of special symbolic mechanisms creating the emotional experience within the situation. Johansen, who tends to explain emotions exerted by the art without leaving the semiotic perspective, is drawn towards the “referential” type of explanation. Based upon discussions in theory of metaphor and Robert Witkin’s sociological theory of arts it is demonstrated an insufficient of “referential” explanation. To overcome a monopoly of “referential” explanation of emotional engagement, in particular, in literature, means to break away from the way of reasoning, stating endless references to “something else”, presupposing the existence of something already significant and therefore sharing its effects.
The article aims to produce an analysis, typology and understanding of the specifics brought about into the English XX-century novel by memory as a technology to narrate the past which has complicated the already existing system of narrative modes and formed a poetics of its own.
The research is based on eleven first-person retrospective English novels: The Good Soldier; Coming Up for Air; Brideshead Revisited; A Dance to the Music of Time; Free Fall; The Sea, the Sea; Waterland; Last Orders; The Remains of the Day; Experiment in Love; Love, etc.
Using historical-literary approach, comparative analysis and narratological methods, the article produces a typological description of such poetological categories as the narrator’s image, the chronotope, the narratee and the system of narrative modes (memory, document and tale).
Developing Bakhtin’s definition of the novel as a “genre of formation” we describe our novels as those of reformation. The narrator is placed in a liminal situation (death, existential crisis, loss of job or divorce) which urges him/her to restore the past. The narrator typically belongs to intellectual background (artist, writer, theatre director, school teacher) and is prone to self-reflection.
The temporal transfer into the past correlates with the physical movement, namely with the chronotope of the road. The past is restored as a result of a return trip (accidental in Waugh or conscious in Orwell and in “Last Orders”) or may unfold in the process of prospective journey as in Ishiguro.
In Waugh and Powell memory is autocommunicative: the narrators restore the past inside their minds, without addressing anyone. Here the implied reader steps to the forefront: by noticing repetitions, omissions and contradictions it makes the narrated world one whole. This reader is not limited to a private story but, through a system of cultural, historical and literary allusions, also shares the cultural past with the characters of Powell and Swift.
Memory also enters symbiotic relations with oral and written modes which makes the novels more dialogic. Via written mode in Murdoch and Golding the novel attempts to bridge the gap between fiction and reality and obtain the status of a real object (the book, the text) through the narrator’s metaliterary commentary and reflection. In the second case (Orwell, Mantel and Barnes) memory is verbalized as a system of voices that address each other and/or the reader. The reader, thus, is involved into the fictional world as a participant.
Ford, Swift and Ishiguro equivocally merge all three modes which, respectively, reflects Dowell’s attempt to escape self-judgement, correlates with the message on the universal connection between times, people and events, is a perfect technique to portray an unreliable narrator. Overall the permeability of modes exemplifies the XX-century tendency to relativize ontological, temporal and narrative borders.