Эстетика и культура: культурологическая интерпретация эстетических трансформаций в ХХ веке

Abstract

The article is devoted to the shifts that unfolded from the turn of the XIX–XX centuries to the turn of the XX–XXI centuries in the humanities. The American researcher D. Bachmann-Medic recently made an expert in determining the most significant processes in this sense in her book "Cultural Turns". In accordance with her concept, at that stage in history when there was a cultural turn, linguistics took a decisive position in the humanities, in particular, in the sciences of art. It can be argued that for decades much in the humanities has been determined precisely by the linguistic turn. In general, that's what happened. This is evidenced by the appearance of formalism in its Russian and German forms at the beginning of the twentieth century, and then structuralism and poststructuralism. The semiotic turn, which aims to study existing sign systems, including art, illustrates the provisions of the book by D. Bachmann-Medic. The problem arose only with aesthetics, which, as linguistics increasingly asserted itself as a leading science, demonstrated a crisis and a decline in its high status. In general, we can agree with this characteristic of the development of the humanities. But the author of the article insists on the need for a culturological reading of scientific processes. Drawing attention to the fact that both signs and methods imitating signs take part in the communication processes (and such methods are, among others, symbols), the author of the article, referring to Hegel's idea that history is the history of the Spirit, shows that forms that arose take part in the communication processes in different periods of the history of the Spirit, including the most archaic forms, to which Hegel referred symbolic, and, in general, mythological forms. The ways of communication, determined not by signs themselves, but by ways imitating signs, and these are symbols, are at the heart of not only sign systems, but also types of culture. Asserting this, the author relies on the idea of representing the poststructuralism of Yu. Kristeva, who distinguishes iconic and unfamiliar types of cultures in history. Based on this idea, the author shows that at the turn of the XX–XXI centuries, humanity is entering an era of radical cultural renewal, which has consequences for the humanities. This epoch is characterized by an exit from a culture functioning on the basis of a sign and an appeal to symbolic forms of thinking, which corresponds to P. Sorokin's concept of sociodynamics of culture, in which types of cultures are distinguished. At the turn of the XX–XXI centuries, a culture based on sensory reality and guided by the cognition of this reality by positivist methods is experiencing a decline, which explains the decline in the status of classical aesthetics. In this context, it becomes clear the final stage in the functioning of the humanities, at which a linguistic turn was possible. This is explained by the next extinction of positivism. Such its extinction will occur in an alternative culture, which activates forms of symbolic thinking. In this atmosphere there will be a revival of aesthetics as a science, in which the forms preceding the emergence of classical aesthetics will be actualized.