Humanitarian Discourse of Ju.M. Lotman: Semiotic Interpretation of Culture Dynamics

Abstract

Conceptualization of the world of culture in the heritage of Yu.M. Lotman opened a new page in the humanities. The comprehension of culture as a highly complex system, the integrity of which is supported by a multitude of texts act­ing as an impulse for self-development, allowed Lotman to develop a dynamic model of culture that explains its ability to generate new texts and achieve syn­ergy of new meanings. The information and communicative essence of culture is revealed by scientists through the concept of “semiosphere”. The integrity of the semiosphere is provided by the memory and ability to abstract as episte­mological prerequisites for the creation of the world of culture. The textual activ­ity of the social subject, through which not only the code of culture is created and preserved, but also the person-in-culture is reproduced, is considered today as a theoretical and applied research problem. Culture forms a value-semantic at­tractor drawing ideas into the concept sphere, which become a starting point for the growth of its multi-layered space, which involves interpretation in order to reduce socio-cultural risks and distortions. Basing on the complication of forms of intellectual interaction, multidimensionality of the polycode cultural space of modern Russia, the search for a collective and individual semantic lan­guage as a dialogue basis is seen as relevant from the standpoint of philosophical knowledge and from the point of view of cultural-creative practical activity.