The Relevance of Yu.M. Lotman’s Legacy: the Conclusion of the Jubilee Year

Abstract

This article is an analysis of Yu.M. Lotman’s legacy and academic Lotman stu­dies in the current scientific humanitarian discourse following the results of the jubilee year. The 100th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding scientist was widely celebrated in the international scientific community in 2022. The fi­nal event was the large-scale international conference “Thinking Worlds by Yu.M. Lotman” organized by Nanjing University in December. Philologists, cul­tural scientists and cultural philosophers discussed various aspects of Lotman’s scientific and creative heritage. They emphasized that the semiotic model of cul­tural interpretation developed by Lotman serves as an interdisciplinary model in a large circle of modern humanities. Scientists from all over the world focused on the universal significance of his theoretical ideas, on the potential of their ap­plication in the analysis of the text as a cultural phenomenon and cultural pro­cesses. The reports showed that Lotman’s works on the theory and history of cul­ture, his cultural semiotics contributed both to the methodological re-equipment of literary studies and the formation of cultural science. The semiotic approach proposed by the scientist made it possible to identify various levels of the exis­tence of the text in culture, its relationship with its other intellectual forms and social practices. Both structural-semiotic and historical-cultural strategies used by Lotman in the analysis of Russian culture, complementing and enriching each other. These strategies enabled the scholar to go beyond the ideological schemes of Soviet literary studies and show the work of notable Russian authors such as Karamzin, Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol as a determining factor in the semiotiza­tion of the intellectual history of Russia, the source of its semantic formation and cultural dynamics. Special attention was paid to the perspective of the develop­ment of Lotman’s philosophical and cultural concept in the research of national cultures as well as intellectual, artistic and social practices of modernity.