Vladimir Yur’evich Lebedev Doctor in Philosophy, professor, Tver’ State University (ulitsa Zhjelyabova, 33, Tver’, Russia, 170023)
semion.religare@yandex.ru
Lebedev V. Yu. Trickster discourse in сurrent religious and сultural context, Religiya. Tserkov’. Obshchestvo. Issledovaniya i publikatsii po teologii i religii [Religion. Church. Society: Research and publications in the field of theology and religious studies], Saint-Petersburg, 2018, vol. 7, pp. 92–107.
doi: 10.24411/2308-0698-2018-00005
Language: Russian
The postsecular culture belongs to the type of transitional cultures that breed the inevitable feeling of transition and stagnation resulting from cultural inertia. At such times individuals and society find themselves at the point of polyfurcation, facing the necessity of choice not only in terms of large-scale social issues, but embracing the entire semiosphere and discourses of culture including the religious ones. These changes reach into the very heart of confessional culture with the greatest changes occuring in the sphere of art. The transitional discourse involves a set of languages and the freedom of choosing them, and defines social and cultural image of the period. The transitional period gives rise to the renewed perception of the world as well as both eternal transcendent systems of concept. It gravitates towards the semiotics of the carnival, of cultural semiotic polystylistics that are often characteristic of the turning-point epochs settling after a short period of laminar culture. Hence — the broad-ranging semiotic experimentations with otherwise rigid existential aspects, including such topics as death and the ensuing afterlife. Trickster discourse comes into a wide demand in the current cultural situation. It turns to the inversion, the carnival and the paradox inevitably attracting those who aren’t interested in religious issues expressed in traditional verbal way. The semiotic sophistication breeds multivariate interpretation admitting concurrent opposing interpretations of the text. The same text can be attributed as «primitive» and «mocking» but also as very intricate, i. e. elitist. Thus, the authors face significantly differ from reference groups of recipients. When the renewed perception becomes settled, the situation enters the stage of stability with its content being defined by the cultural choice made during the transitional period.
Key words: laminar culture, polyinterpretativity, trickster, discourse, estrangement, postsecularity