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Sociotechnical reality of the digital space of contemporary politics: Structure and features
No full textThe main purpose of the article was the analysis of experts’ ideas about the digital space of
modern politics. The authors put forward a hypothesis about the formation of an independent
ontological space of modern digital politics, which has its own principles of functioning. The
intensive introduction of digital technologies into the modern practice of socio-political management, the active development of the global digital infrastructure lead today to the formation
of a new type of sociotechnical reality and an independent phygital space of politics within which
virtualized constructs, values, meanings are formed and communication interaction is transformed.
In the digital space of politics, there is an algorithmization of power, with the help of
which political institutions actively borrow corporate techniques of predictive analytics, ranking,
filtering information to study target audiences, manage the political agenda and correct public
sentiment; new hybrid actors with serious power potential and the ability to form the design
of modern politics for their own purposes and interests appear in current political practice. To
confirm the working hypothesis, the authors conducted an international expert survey, which
allowed to study the views of experts on the features of the digitalization of modern politics and
the characteristics of the emerging sociotechnical reality. The results of the study confirm the
hypothesis, however, experts assess the speed and trends of the formation of this new type of
policy in different ways. Based on the results of theoretical and empirical research, the authors
highlight the key trends in the formation of the modern socio-technical space of politics.The reported study was funded by of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Expert
Institute for Social Research according to the research project no. 21-011-31089 “The structure and
peculiarities of contemporary politics digital space’s functioning in the context of global technological
transformations”
Technological Peculiarities of Old Russian Books as Reflected in Early Modern Inventories of Monastic Libraries
Get PDFThe paper analyzes inventories of the late 15th–17th centuries from four major Russian monasteries:
St Cyril’s of Belozersk, The Solovetsky monastery, Joseph-Volokolamsk monastery, and
The Holy Trinity — St Sergius monastery. These inventories list the monasteries’ property for
its safekeeping. The inventories of monastic libraries contain valuable information about the
system of book keeping and the development of bibliography in Old Rus’. They also provide
some clues for attribution of books, which can help in reconstructing the concepts of bookmaking
technologies in Early Modern period. These technological notes in descriptions of
books are organized according to the system created by the inventories compilers: the format, the binding, the artistic values, the type and technique of writing, the page’s composition, the
writing material, the state of preservation. The paper shows that the major goal in creating
these inventories was to single out the most important elements allowing to recognize the
book. Yet the description of these elements was not uniform. The attention was mainly directed
to external attribution of a book. From the second half of the 16th century the cursive
writing and the so-called metnoe pismo (a sort of scrittura usuale) were already recognized
as different from standard book writing and had to be distinguished and indicated in book
inventories. The inventories reflected those characteristics of books that were important for
the librarians and therefore shaped certain semantic structures in professional mentality of
Old Russian bookmen. For modern scholars they can serve as markers that follow the process
of the development of book technologies in Early Modern period.The reported study was funded by the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 22-18-00615 (“Technological
shifts in the material culture of Ancient Russia: a comprehensive study of books and documents
of the 11th–17th centuries”)
Who and How is Studying the Russian Presence on the South Manchurian Railway
Get PDFBased on the works by English-speaking authors on the South Manchurian Railway published
after 2000, the author explores the phenomenon of the Russian/Soviet presence in Manchuria
and in East Asia. The object of study was under the jurisdiction of Russia for a short time,
but remained a kind of barometer of the pre- and post-war regional order. This is due to the
significant strengthening of Japan and the Japanese presence, so the “before — after” scheme
is present in the reviewed studies, and the change in the disposition of the powers is one of
the main narrative plots. A similar “before — after” scheme in a number of works reflects
the transformation of the positions of individual Western scholars under the influence of the
so-called “memory wars” against the background of changes in the system of international
relations over the past 7–8 years. The works in question concentrate on those spheres of public
life that were affected by the railway irrespective of its subordination. The conclusions of the
article reveal that this topic is under-researched; that foreign scholars make little use of the
Russian resources and the potential of Russian researchers; that some opportunistic studies
seek to present Russia as an aggressor and an expansionist, and the imperial policy — as a
failure and disaster for the region.The research was carried out with the support of the Russian Scientific Foundation grant No. 22-28-
01087 “The Russian world of Inner Asia in the 21st century: the politics of memory and the symbolic legacy
of political presence”
Purchase and sale and prohibition of uncertainty (gharar) in the Islamic tradition
No full textThe article deals with the requirements of Islamic law to the classical contract of sale. The authors
conclude that the prescriptions regarding the conclusion of a contract of sale, the object
of sale and price formation are largely explained by the attraction of Islam to fairness in trade.
Analyzing the object of sale, the authors refer to the concept of property al-mal and its forms —
al-‘ayn property and al-dayn property. They insist that al-dayn is not an analogue of “obligation”,
“debt” or “right of claim” in the civilian or common law’s traditions, but a unique concept
of Islamic law, literally meaning “property-in-the-future”. Considering limitations to sale of aldayn
property, this article presents the approaches of madhhabs regarding the admissibility
of and conditions for the sale and purchase of bay’ al-dayn. The basic tool of Islamic law on its
way to a sustainable trade turnover is the prohibition of transactions involving excessive uncertainty
gharar. The authors reveal the meaning of this concept, which has been widely discussed
among Muslim scholars, and distinguish the notion of gharar from the notions of risk and gambling
maysīr. Application of gharar prohibition to the contract of sale has its own characteristics
and gharar becomes key point in deciding whether it is admissible to sell a non-existent thing —
bai‘ al-ma‘dum and sell a thing that is not available for physical inspection at the time of the
transaction — bai‘ al-ghayb. In this context, the authors pay attention to the distance sale of
goods by preliminary inspection, by sample and by description. Islamic law offers an effective
mechanism for removing the uncertainty gharar from the contract of sale, giving the buyer the
right of khiyar al-ru’yah, which is the right to unilaterally withdraw from the contract at the moment
of physical inspection of the goods
The interaction of verbal and non-verbal elements in Eugene Grishkovets’ solo performances as a way to overcome the postmodern tradition
No full textThe article analyzes the interaction of verbal and non-verbal elements in Grishkovets’ solo
performances. The material for analysis is official video recordings of performances. Performances
by Grishkovets and the play texts he published afterwards are interconnected but
are different works — with differing content, motif systems, and differently placed semantic
accents. It is the non-verbal elements (spatial movements, gestures, interaction with props
and decorations, etc.) that Grishkovets uses to play with the boundaries between the fictional
world and external reality, involve the viewers in what is happening and give them an opportunity
to relate to the narrator. One of the most important motifs of Grishkovets’ drama is the
issue of unreliability or insufficiency of human speech. It seems that it is no coincidence that
one can find many features of postmodernism in the works of Grishkovets (playful intertextuality,
unreliable narrator, blurring of the boundaries of narrative instances, and boundaries
between text and reality, etc.). However, the author only pretends to be guided by the postmodern
tradition in order to, after verbally emphasizing the problematic nature of communication
between people (due to the unreliability of the language), establish communication
between the narrator and the audience using primarily non-verbal means. Such a complexly
built interaction of verbal and non-verbal elements, literary and theatrical principles allows
Grishkovets to outline and overcome the main problem of postmodern culture — the communication
problem.The study was funded by the Russian Science Foundation, project no. 21-18-00527, in the Institute of
Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, https://rscf.ru/project/21-18-00527/
Sergey Eisenstein: Director’s interpretation of Alexander Rzheshevsky’s screenplay Bezhin Meadow
No full textThis article examines the interpretation of Alexander Rzheshevsky’s screenplay Bezhin Meadow
by Sergey Eisenstein. Comparison of different versions of the script reveals the emergence
of the film’s conception and changes of the narrative made during the transition from the
screenplay to the shooting script. Special attention was given to Eisenstein’s interpretation
of the three key episodes of the future film: siege of the church, highway episode, and defeat
of the church. The reduction of narrative distance and the growth of the scale of an event are
exemplified are exemplifies by the scene of the siege of the church. From this point of view the
shelling of peasants from the church and the subsequent assault evoke episodes from Battleship
“Potemkin” and October. The interpretation of the highway episode is based on the use of
visual and aural counterpoint. Eisenstein finds the equivalent of the spoken word through the
use of the contrasting montage that combines images with speech, noise and music. Eisenstein
strengthens the role of religious reminiscences in the central episode of the defeat of the
church while showing the destruction of religious objects. Each of these episodes in a way or
another implies violence and oriented to the expression of traumatic experience. In this sense
Rzheshevsky’s screenplay echoed Eisenstein’s creative preoccupations. It made possible the
depiction of historical events in such a way that history itself becomes a substitute for this
experience. The study of the narrative in the screenplay allows us to reconstruct the content of
the unfinished and forbidden film
Chess notation in a polycode text (based on the German language)
Get PDFChess literature is a type of specialized literature with its own metalanguage and
tradition of presenting material. The study focuses on the structure of works by Z. Tarrasch
and A. Nimzowitsch, which can be viewed as multimodal polycode texts, combining
natural language with chess notation, a symbolic system used to record the
moves of a chess game. In addition to notation, symbols for evaluating moves play
an important role in the texts in question, as well as verbal commentaries explaining
what is happening on the board and diagrams visualizing the position on the board at
a certain moment in the game. If a fragment of a chess game is presented, the diagram
serves as an indication of the initial arrangement of pieces. Thus, the subsequent symbolic
notation of moves becomes meaningful only in connection with the diagram. In
other cases, the diagrams focus the reader’s attention on the key points of a game. In
the digital world, new means for presenting chess games and comments are used. In
the e-versions of the books in question, the reader can play the moves of a game on a
digital board. At the same time, the structure of the source text undergoes changes: it
is divided into blocks, the elements of the notation are presented as hyperlinks, font
changes are used, and structural elements are added. In some cases, the specifics of the
text requires its additional adaptation to the electronic format
Functions of a poetic text as a commentary on an engraving of the 16th century (on the example of the book “Description of all estates and crafts on earth” (“Eygentliche Beschreibung Aller Stände auff Erden”) by Jost Ammann and Hans Sachs, 1568)
Get PDFThis article is devoted to study of the main functions of a poetic text written by
the famous German poet Hans Sachs, as a commentary on the engravings of the Swiss
woodcut and illustrator Jost Ammann. Published against the background of the Reformation,
in the era of the development of printing and the rise of interest in various
types of information, the collection of engravings “Description of all classes and crafts
on Earth” (“Eygentliche Beschreibung Aller Stände auff Erden”) was aimed at expanding
and systematizing the reader’s knowledge about the structure of society. The main
functions are nominative (the name of the depicted object), informational (reporting
information about a representative of a particular profession or class in society) and
aesthetic (poetic commentary makes a significant contribution to the aesthetic value of
the collection). A distinctive feature of the information function is its implementation:
the main way of presenting information is typification — the representation of the object
in the most generalized, recognizable form, indicating information that meets the
receptive capabilities of the reader. Additional features include a text pre-organization
function (the role of the title as an element equally related to both the image and the
text, pre-orients the reader), mnemonic or embedding function (duplication of information
from the title in the main text in order to simplify its perception) and advertising
(ensuring the popularity of a collection of engravings by attracting a well-known
poet as a co-author). The article consists of introduction, main part and conclusion
New hero in the 1960s Hungarian fiction and film
No full textThe article explores the formation of a new hero in Hungarian cinema of the 1960s against
the background of transformations that took place in Hungarian society during the so-called
Kádár Consolidation period, and in the context of changes that affected the country’s literature
and film. The emergence of a new hero is closely connected with literature due to the traditional
literary-centricity of Hungarian cinema. A brief description of the situation in literature
and film in 1960s of this period is followed by references to three films-symbols of the era:
Cantata by Miklos Jáncsó, based on József Lengyel’s short story, Age of Illusions by István
Szabó and Good Evening, Summer, Good Evening, Love by Sándor Szőnyi and László Márton
based on a short novel by Endre Fejes. The works of Jancsó and Szőnyi are screen adaptations
of literary works (the book behind Szőnyi’s film is based on real events), while Sabo’s picture
uses an original script, but using documentary materials. Versatile visual solutions, and an
appeal to the current narrative techniques in current film speak in favor of the departure of
1960s’ Hungarian films from texts’ adaptations and signal the desire to talk about modernity
using new modalities and practices of European cinema, as well as principles of composition
inherent in the Hungarian visual arts (especially photography)
Evaluation of relevance in the structure of a multimodal scientific text
Get PDFThis article studies semiotic resources for expressing the evaluation of relevance in
the framework of research practice. The analysis is carried out using a set of German
linguistic articles. The central question is the use of linguistic and visual-graphic means
in the semiosis of the evaluation of relevance. The methodological basis of the analysis
is set by the theoretical guidelines of interactional sociolinguistics, linguistic semiotics,
social semiotics and metapragmatics which defend the basic theses about the fundamental
multimodality of any text and social conditioning of textual meanings by the
goals and sociocultural context of the communicative practice. The article for the first
time presents and systematizes the corpus data on graphic design used in a research
article; the role of the visuality in creating the evaluative meaning of relevance; three
main options for coding the evaluation of relevance are identified and described: linguistic,
visual-graphic and mixed. In the context of a scientific research situation, both
a separate application of semiotic modes of a verbal code and their interaction in the
structure of a multimodal scientific text are analyzed. In terms of integration, contrast,
and double coding, the semantic relations between linguistic and visual-graphic modes
are categorized, as well as the relationship of each of the modes with the basic verbal
code. The presented results of the analysis contribute to the theoretical understanding
of how a researcher verbalizes, and a recipient interprets the evaluation of relevance in
the multimodal semiotic environment of a textual whole.The study was prepared with the support of the Russian Science Foundation
(project 22-28-01024 “Evaluation language in scholarly humanities practices and discourses
of Germany and Russia”) at the St Petersburg State University