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Third millennium -- "R" Age?
... This page was written many years ago -- a century ago. I didn't expect that the speed (exeleration?) of web will have such pace... I saw the subject of resurrection artistically, or academically. I didn't know that faces around will be different.
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2008 --
 Bad Theories, Wrong Subjects View GuestBook Sign
SummaryNotes only. Too many topics and issues for one webpage (chapter).QuestionsAs you can see, I run into very serious problems with terminology. Pomo, theology, physics -- what a mix! I do not have a systematic mind of a scholar; you have to live my "poetic" approach to science.Notes 2004 & After
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For too long "resurrection" was a concept (inner structure of image); and a religious, metaphysical one. A poetry of the abstract thought. The unthinkable and challenging to the possible! As usual, very little intellectual attention was given to the miraculous. What is there to analyze in resurrection? Well, that was the reason why the apocalypse took place unnoticed. We are still around, aren't we? Just another poetic word -- the End of the World! Yeah, yeah....Apocalypse is the "end of the world AS WE KNOW." The end of the known (this) world and begining of ANOTHER (unknown) "life." Nobody ever said that it will be the end of being. More on mechanics of the resurrection is in _The View Points_, the book on film, which is a physical phenomena, it exists. Film exists no less than other "real" objects, but we can experience it only in a process of seeing. Why is it a difficult concept to comprehend, when we know something like "book" for so long? When we live through experience of perception we have the reality which "died" and "resurrected" by us. How real are my feelings? I guess, who don't know it, are in need of a shrink.
The logic of resurrection looks almost primitive. A negation of death must insist on death to negate it. I can't remember something without it being behind, gone, dead. I don't remember future only because it's not dead yet, it hasn't happen yet. The Resurrection Age is the final acceptance of death, not a denial. Death becomes a condition of Resurrection with the same elementary need of eventuality (as birth is a precondition for death). The pre-condition for birth, its situation is NON-EXISTENCE (Being as Nothing). The absence. The resurrection is a return, when existence experience its opposite. That's interesting. We are used to the dualism "life-death," but here we are offered another level of "life" -- yes, in familiar language "life after death."
We have to rethink death as well. Not the ultimate end (which still exist), but the death full of potential for another "life" -- existence after death. Perhaps, something fundamentally wrong with me, but I see no problems with it. The presence of reality in my mind is real and it has mimetic relation with the real outside. The relations of the two is another matter but existence of world without its existence in my mind has an academic interest for me. The science developed into industry deals with the world without me. I will leave "natural science" to their own re-examination at the time of resurrection. I start where end. The Life of the Dead is my subject.
Now, should death be seen as "second" being of Nothing? This non-being quality is present in the resurrected subject. It's not as "alive" as before death. The Resurrected doesn't live "second life." I, resurrected, live all the structures of existence (four stages), preceding the Resurrection: 1. Non-existence, 2. Birth, 3. Life, 4. Death, and it has its own time (and space) within the chronotope of Resurrection. I'm living R only if I live all the stages before it. PRE-BIRTH and AFTER DEATH stages are the grounds (materials) of resurrection. Death or non-being must have "life" of its own....
THEM, US, HUMANKIND
One dimensional man (ODM) is a prime material for Resurrection (the proto-humanity), as before he was a material for evolution. Humankind became a cosmic force; our problems with environment should convince you. Humanity has to be considered a quality of the universe; it earned the right to be equal in powers with gravity. Human race reached the critical mass in numbers and enrichment (concentration) and ODM is a part of this radioactive material. Individuality never was his definitive quality. He was there to continue, to carry on the existence of "humankind." He multiplied, progressing and evolving. Resurrection needs a lot of them, little people.
.... Ruserrection Age? Maybe a simple image could help you. What did you think after you click on the link to this page? Did the page "Rage.html" exist before you actually see it? Not really. Commands, codes, files -- but not the actual "page," which is assembled on demand. Something like "resurrection" principle: we have some data to build the new "body" on. Well, now you understand how many are involved into "resurrection" of this page: me, you, others, technology (more others) -- wow!What else the symbol of the Virgin was for? To individualize the last man (he was always there). They, people, weren't created, but born. Now it's time to equalize them with God, in image and likeness.
.... All, I should say. All are needed for every resurrection. Finally, at last, we have to be literaly together (communism) in order for this new world to work...If the world is about to be humanized, the low life must be the first to go through the transformation. They, masses, not only a material but the tools of resurrection. The social science spent enough time analyzing the process of changes we go through. I feel embarrassed to talk about the obvious, the difference between the present and the past. The border line is so definite that the wisdom of the statement "the more things change the more the stay the same" seems a hollow to me. Of course, the past is not forgotten but reinforced; so-called "human nature" is not only present as ever but even multiplied. Didn't I tell you about the nature of resurrection?
.... Is me only? Don't we see that old "death" and "birth" should be seen through new reality. Enough! We should understand that our DNA and clonning is not science and technology only. Please!I. AFTER THE FACT[2]
Price of admission to paradise -- life. I feel cheated. Didn't I paid already for my expulsion. Exit and entrance visa. You pay twice, to get in get out.
Post-modern, post-colonial, now -- post-communist. To combine them all -- post-human? Nothing rejected, all negated. Our "post" is based on them, it uses all as a material (methods?) -- so what is "new" about the new world?
Resurrected world is far from being original, it's a copy, a clone. And it has to have no originality, otherwise it turns into a creation. Our creativity is applied genius, craftsmanship. Their dreams became our plans. Ideas, ideals, models, wishes -- not ours but theirs by its origins. We are labor, material, brains (not minds).
Slaves of resurrection. (I'm sure that atoms in a nuclear reactor call the place a concentration camp).
Of course there's no place for a mortal and his desires, he is a criminal by his mortal nature, he is about to die, his death challenges the new world order. Human himself with his dual nature could only be tolerated, the animal in him must be reformed by his angel. Angel as a machine for processing animals. Word-processor is a food processor.
Souls. They are not man and woman, it's not politically correct to call them this way, they are souls (virtual humans). In Soviet Russia they call each other comrades. They are being resurrected.
What is our progress if not a strive for control over life (death) and mortality of humanity? We view the phenomena of technology or population as "natural" (even out of our control situation), it's not fashionable to see it as our will to survive.
After accomplishing our impossible dream, how could we give up on the biggest of all, the dearest to us -- our own personal immortality. Everything was done for this very purpose: to live forever. Give it to me! Now!
Equal, the same? All belongs totally to paradise, none can't be separated from all.
II. SWEET JESUS, A MAN
Over the last two thousand years so much human energy and time were vested into Christ that even if God was just an idea, by now this thought has became a reality. More. Does it really matter in human universe (as in matters of the heart) that there was no God-man? Isn't that the essence of belief that the reality of feelings supersedes any other "reality"? Our need for God is so great, even if he is dead, he will be resurrected.
Next. Doesn't my love of God makes Him a subject of compassion and puts him into position of inferior to man? Love to a superior being (if this is love) grows into dependence of caring, giving and protecting. Did God crave for love of his children (Old Testament)? Why would he need our love and attention if not for being weak and powerless? (being in need) Did He, the immortal, seek mortality? Wouldn't the one who created man in his image and likeness, expect no less from his creature than from himself?
God could afford to be dead, having a man with the mind of Nietzsche.
Conclusion of my WP 51:
Our times of super-human power over nature (since this isn't just my power but OUR power) is nothing less than a resurrection of God. Is that a satanic substitution of true God, our own invention in our image and likeness? Primitive forms of God made in USSR and USA at the times of crude communism.Picasso: there're the souls of resurrected. Take a look. Deconstruction is a process of constructing, composing, creating something bigger than a creator, where creator is only a part of his creation.
III. RELIGIOUS (ESSENCE OF) ATHEISM
No religion in paradise, it would be an insult. Separation of church and state? We are religious as ever! Although to be a Christian in the kingdom of Christ is a ticket to hell, which is a part of el paradiso.
1. Communist ideology (old left); CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT GOD
Communism is a social expression of Resurrection.
Our WW II was a religious war, in forms or redefining the borders, in essence competing concept of "communization." Religious wars in Europe were fought over the differences in interpretation of the same subject (God).
Communists: we took God's death seriously. We believed in it. We acted as nothing was left in the world to save us and we have to do the salvation job by ourselves. The 20th century went into a frenzy of changes and preparations for self-reliance. Death of God did a lot of good for the human race. We grew up from homo sapience to homo humanus in one century; more was done to change our life than in the entire history before us.3 We changed creatures, reformed, born again. Now we are true creatures of ourselves.
It was painful. The Russian communists went into a total destruction of formal Christianity as if Russian God personally betrayed them. Every image of Christ was removed; we better remember that we have nothing but ourselves to relay on (very American?)
The post-communist rehabilitation of the Orthodox Church is only an act of cultural archeology. Previous total identification with God is gone even more than at the communist era. Orthodoxy was one of the three official components of Russian identity; another one -- Tzar. Autocracy was destroyed after the Stalin's death ("cult of personality"). What was left: the people (ness). Russian people and the faith in Russian people is the last icon in the Russia House. Russian people are always right. Never blame the people for anything. The are the victim and the savior...
The New Russians gave up on this business of resurrection of Russian God. anything national is a private business in kingdom of pomo. Now they believe in American super-national gods. Do they? Or the apparatus of faith is lost? Did they arrive from the Soviet (super) postmodernism to our classical postmodernism?
2. STYLISM
Imperialism of English language? I like this culture because we spell "I" with the capital letter. I like Pm for academic marginality. Of course, the aesthetics of collage has its shortcomings.
Resurrection, Trinity, God?..
Theology? No.
Avoiding new terminology? Yes.
What is to be gained or lost? We are using medieval theologians in "desires," "transparency," panic." Existentialism introduced "non-philosophical" categories. Theosophy got bad name, but not as bad as religion. We rather use science terminology, borrowing from math and physics till the point when definitions get to the level of not being functional.
Knowledge is inclusive. Even our forgetting is a system of remembering.[4]"The research on cyberspace is a quest for God. To be God. To be here and there. For example, when I say: "I'm looking at you, I can see you", that means: "I can see you because I can't see what is behind you: I see you through the frame I am drawing. I can't see inside you". If I could see you from beneath or from behind, I would be God. I can see you because my back and my sides are blind. One can't even imagine what it would be like to see inside people.
The technologies of virtual reality are attempting to make us see from beneath, from inside, from behind... as if we were God. I am a Christian, and even though I know we are talking about metaphysics and not about religion, I must say that cyberspace is acting like God and deals with the idea of God who is, sees and hears everything."[5]Film is a language of Resurrection (and method).
IV. GOD'S SPECTATORSHIP
Communication with God is poetry. (Poetry is a manifestation of your right for truth). The form of this poetry is dramatic. Epics (history) is our and His inter-action (texts), product of our relations.
Relations with God has to be theatrical (visual). Cinema is no less natural than an icon.
This is the real game. Or play?
Communication with God is a communication with yourself: monologue and dialogue. Monologue = dialogue. Is it a communication (one way)?
The spectator was always there (under a mask of writer himself; spectator is a creator's unconscious).
Peasants playing aristocrats: fingernails, pants down (no working society), leisure as a business. "Models" (live mannequins) and model (ideal) man an woman. Celebrity: global high society. Capital = media.
Spectators and actors; spectacle for ourselves (God). Do we have visual model (past), or this is an archaeology, memories and imagination, myths?
Rich and famous; rich is a must. Famous = known, renown? Why not as a family, clan, always in first generation, no heritage. What they (the past) were imitating?
The mass society is hell which provides for paradise my personal solitude. Am I safe and saved? (PM guaranties physical). Insured living. Power is positive, it creates (Foucault). I'm a result of the revolt against the power.
Viewing makes this process public, a must for any event to count as actual.
V. PERSONAL AS PUBLIC PROCESS?
1. BODY
Biblical "resurrection" is intellectually sloppy idea. There are many (at least three) versions: Lazarus, Christ and the dead (the rest). Lazarus in our terminology would be classified as "re-animated" -- he came back in the same mortal body, and later even died the second time after all. "Return" is not a resurrection.
Christ's body disappeared and he appeared in new body...
This "body" problems hunt the idea of resurrection throughout the big book: do we need bones or ashes for resurrection? What about the last men which witness the end, what about their "traditional" (flesh) bodies?
2. DEATH
The notion of resurrection requires death (it's not the same as "born again Christians"6). Death has to be factual and actual, real.(?) Criminals and mystery writers have the same problem with dead bodies -- what to do with them? (my own dead body -- what shall I wish to be done with it?) Judging by the way we treat our dead -- nothing, forget it, they are gone. Do we need Shakespeare's DNA to resurrect him? What about Plato? Why did they need all those complicated arrangements and explanations to accept the idea that mortality and eternity do not exclude each other? I feel as if among the children who believe that the only way to live again is to be a mummy. Today's Egyptians put their heads in deep freeze. This total identification of personality with body can be explained historically, but not even emotionally to such a post-modern individual as myself. Why would I be so interested to preserve the same body which I never liked much in first place? How much my body is fact contributed to formation of my identity? This is a question of interest for Freudian biography writers. My physicality is only a prologue, a starting point, a begining -- but my sense of myself doesn't end, or doesn't refer much to my body.
Yes, Body plays an important role in shaping my identity (I remember my teen years). So, my parents, environment, culture, weather, everything! Perhaps, all the above could throw some light on what I am, but would not explain why I am a NEW thing, and not a simple sum of elements and experiences (laws of big numbers). I like the notion that I didn't exist before, and will vanish in time. That's what makes my presence valuable. Resurrection is not of a need to continue of the same. I don't like the extremes of incarnations either. Fish has its own identity, and I have to be forced to squeeze my personality in it?
My understanding of resurrection is based on two miracles: the birth which comes with the nature, and the totality of humanity which included now the first nature as a part. The birth is no longer a need for humankind survival, we reached the critical mass when we don't have to multiply to beat the death rate. Our second nature, global humanity, could take care of human reproduction on industrial basis. As with the birth of Christ, every birth today has not reproductive but "human" purpose, a mission.
Resurrection means meeting yourself as Other.
We know that there's another birth which I have to give to myself -- my recognition of my presence. (Not foe a mass-man?)That's where come in my problematics. I don't claim to be resurrected "somebody," a new Rozanov, or returned Belinski. What I recognize is that in my identity there are many of the previous individuals present (to a greater degree than my genetic relatives). In the past it was called "influences." Did Nietzsche "influenced" or "shaped" me? Or maybe, my life is a continuity of his existence? His physical presence was only a stage of his actual existence. He valued this part of his identity more than his bodily presence (the time he spent on writing indicates it). So do I, my reading of Foucault is a continuation of his search, his real life.
The problem with crossing body's lines that we still think about ourselves in terms of "individuals." No matter how many times we would declare the end of man, no matter how much our actual existence would prove that we are not define as independent entities -- we can't accept it! The body in me screams -- me, me! Me who? What a childish cry! When I treasure my difference, my novelty in this world, it's not out of pride (Hegel), which is vanity. I don't view it as simply "different" (something else), I see it as an extension of the past (through negation?).
3. LIFE BEFORE LIFE
Resurrection comes into picture because I have my pre-existence. My problems in life were because I was taken for somebody else by myself and others. I was treated by them and by myself as if a construct which had no previous design. Instead of being understood as property by my parents and country men, or even by myself as MY property -- I and them should search for a design (almost Platonic "idea") of me. We are not "tabula" and "rasa" -- each of us is a message and a messenger from the past to the future.
The paradox of extreme individualism (Stirner) that in expanding your own borders indefinitely "I" loses its form. I don't refer to myself as Anatoly. I'm the world. From this last horizon of self-identification I can't see the difference between myself and you. Here is another reason for communism, a metaphysical one.
My experience of myself tells me that I have to redefine the concepts of life, identity, death, and everything else. With or without your help.
4. BIRTH
Birth of Christ; was it a resurrection? Was it a death of the pure divine = the conception? Did heavenly Son maintain His existence while historical Jesus lived?
Eve's pregnancy (secret) was the reason for expulsion from Paradise. (Destruction of Eden). Was Adam expected to create his children? What was this "multiply" for?
The baby -- not created! Anti-creation? Anti-God? Life, with its own sources and powers.
HELL
Paradise is being connected with God [everything and therefore the notion of individual (separate) is dismissed. What about unique (the only one) soul?] Christianity always warned about being self-centered, one has to give himself fully to God. (that's how you get your full self-expression). Insisting on being an individual, I turn paradise into my personal hell. (Amazing, how communists followed the book: they went on destroying the churches -- since John saw no temples in God's kingdom). Very Orwellian: Paradise is Hell. Depends on who you are -- maybe, a satan?
Interesting, Christ talked about a few, we -- all! Imposed paradise is the Judgement Day. The living and the dead are mixed. They are equal, you can't see the difference; all are on trail. Do the living die in Apocalypse to be judge, or they processed "as is"? The issue it not that individual must be destroyed, but can it be destroyed?
COMMUNISM IN AMERICA: Cultural Studies of Social Performance
First, on terminology.
CAPITALISM. According to Lenin, the 20th century has no classical capitalism but IMPERIALISM. Both WWs proved that his point very valuable, especially after 50 years of the confrontation of two military super-powers know as the Cold War. Soviet marxism saw Imperialism as a final stage of capitalism which was to follow by the fist stage of Communism in a form of Socialism. Europe and USA have an enormous structure of socialist formations (even in economics). Of course, we don't have "free" market, our "capitalistic" structures are all relative. Our democracy is by no means prevents us from socialism (and communism). We know that even Nazism could be elected to power democratically. The question is what are our cultural values?
Another myth is about conflict between Communism and Christianity. Their conflict based on their closeness: after all, communism is nothing less than socialized Christianity. The Soviet communists were attacking the Church for its concept of a just world which was placed outside our present world. Communism is a radical Christianity with all the aspects of Christian doctrine which is taken literary as a model for immediate implementation. Atheism of communists should be seen as a natural behavior of citizens of the paradise on earth. Any belief in God in His kingdom and Him presence is a heresy. Communism has dropped nothing out of what could be seen as its ideological counterparts: according to Hegelian dialectics is not a rejection but a negation (which includes previous fundamental beliefs and models). Therefore a comparison of capitalism and socialism7 which was so popular during the arms race, is less and less relevant. There are no socialism or capitalism in its classical pure forms, only in intentions.
HISTORY OF HISTORY: SUBJECT AND METHOD
Performance theory as analytical (philosophy) method of studying history as a performance narrative. Thought is a narration tool. Our history is an invention. Most of the time we are fixing what we screwed up in the first place. History always was a collections of trails and errors. And every error was final call. Our history is open rehearsals, or dress performance. It's never fully ready for the public. Because the audience is we, the performers.
American history became very important subject not only because the United States is the only world "super-power," but because it has very new, special character of history. Before we knew history as God-men cooperation.
America is a text(s) and should be "read" in terms what it does (economic, political, cultural performance). Performance manifests the essence of the subject. Media is America's cultural performance. Digital Behaviorism; when what is said is an act.
History is a medium of history. Two functions of history: actual and educational. Non-intentional message (subtext) is the most important, this is the actual meaning. Not history but a perception of history is our sense of history. If the Soviet historians were forced constantly to re-write its past history, in America we re-write our present. We make it interpretive in nature from the start. History is a material for history.
History has to play "history" because we're watching ourselves. History is our creation and we need to know how it performs. Marxism was never shy about our active role in history-making. This positive attitude to idea of face is very American. Even if we are not in full control of our destiny we have to believe that we are. The media plays the role of democratization of this concept, reinsuring us that we are at least keep an eye on every event taking place today. Media (communications) is our inspirational tool of communist religion.
SOCIALISM
European socialism in all its shapes is a stage of world communism. Socialism isn't an intellectual invention anymore but a reflection of socialized history. The process of socialization in the States took place during the modernism (imperialism); nazism, fascism, stalinism and the New Deal are the different expressions of the same process. Nationalization of American history. History as a global property. America as Cultural Super-power: conflict of interests (national and global). Self-contradictions = the source of further development of communism. This inner conflict was noticed and describes by marxism at the very begining of the century. Socialism, according to marxism is self-contractive, transitional, functional.
We, the Americans, fought the RADICALS (brown fascists, red communists), not the idea of the collective. We are humans = social beings. ... We are against controlled society because we believed in disciplined society -- American democracy. Oh, no, we fought for this idea! And we won. Communism isn't a specter but the machine, the system of our global self-governing.
SOCIALISM OR COMMUNISM?
It was a natural move for anybody who was late (Russia, Asia, Africa) to go for a short cut (State as a society), in order to get into the times of paradise (American sophisticated societal communism).
Communism as an idea should be legitimized (stripped of negative connotations) for us to escape the bigotry and hypocrisy. White and Red lies are lies! Communist believed that the Soviet Union is free country (as long as you agree with their concept of freedom). American style democracy is a freedom only within its own limitations. Communism is neither good nor bad. We must see it as cultural (and therefore social, economic, and etc. structure) we are living in. This is the only way to deal with ourselves, to accept it.
Communism's negative stigma would mean little for next generation who would know no Cold War with WW II witnesses long gone.
Communism was a counter-balance for America's communist inclinations. The Evil Empire is no more, America would slide into communism without even noticing the downhill ride.
Goodbye, democracy of the island.
Limits of American democracy were natural, including the slavery. PM America is a negation of "One Nation Under God." Are we there? One global nation under American god?
American conservatives: soft and hard communism.
They believe in powers of individual? Personal responsibility, etc. What do they mean? Anarchism and communism are two stages of the same process. Even early history of marxism as an ideology proves it. As well as the history of the Russian Civil War of 1918-1920.
Demos as a concept focuses not on one, but many ones. Democracy (not necessary through state) provides the human space for individual actions. Individual is an agent of performance but his environment isn't of the same nature (check and balances).
Every time we cry "democracy," we must remember that this social organization is good for governing or arts (?), and after all, democracy is a historical social dominant form, which won't be with us forever.
Are they inductive terms: communism and democracy? (Anarchy = no state structure. Libertarians?)
The moment communism would lose its need for human factor, we won't object to its limitations (laws). Communications controlled by technology are accepted without even noticing their dictatorship. What does the President do? Show time!
When Alexis de Tocqueville wrote "Democracy in America" communists in Europe didn't know yet that they are communists (1835, 1840). Marx was seventeen, in 1848 he was thirty.
Why T. didn't call it "Socialism in America"? Democracy was so new and hot (especially in Europe, where they were coming of age of aristocracy), that democracy wasn't a substitute for socialism.
Is socialism an economic concept (production--distribution)? Socialism = society. Capitalism and communism clashed on economic level (starting with Marx himself), which is not an ideological confrontation. Could it be seen as confrontation of means achieving the same ideological drive? Equality? Capitalism is (mainly) an economical definition?
Workers: Communist overalls and Wrangler's jeans. Chinese in their Mao uniforms are a caricature of American "general equality of condition among the people." (26)
ANYTHING MODERN MUST BE RECOGNIZED AS POSTMODERNISM
In our postmodern (PM) times everything is postmodern.
Subjects which are playing themselves. The easiest way to imitate yourself is to caricature. I would say that for any subject to present itself in PM is to parody itself. Unfortunately, we ridicule ourselves without even noticing what we are doing. We are clowns of PM history (which is a clown or clone of history) who behave as CEOs. And this is a tragic comedy.
Question on questioning.
Just an observation. Clinton and Yeltsin -- they are the representations of POLITICAL POSTMODERNISM. Fragmentation, no core ("character" issue), no ideology, no consistency (Bush was no better)... They're postmodernists like everybody else in PM time; their selection as leaders is the sign who we are. By comparison Reagan now looks like as the last solid American president. Bad actor Reagan who never consider himself as nothing more than a conservative local propagandist became a symbol of a great American leadership. Yeltsin, who was a secondary figure as a member of the Politburo, preciously because of the lack of personality and political savageness, placed at the top because he looks "presidential."
PM in politics is much more dangerous matter than PM in literature. Our postmodernist army is an army only in appearance. The Golf War questionable half victory was possible because we fought another postmodernist pseudo-army. Everything about PM state is only a pastiche, an imitation of the subject. The war against crime (every name in PM must be in parentheses) can't be won because it's only a name. We know that it's not a real war, we know that our police isn't real. Like our judicial system, our prisons, our punishment. PM police only represent law and order; they limited by so many regulations and postmodern convictions (women in the force, for one), that they can't behave as a police. They only can act like a police. They are not open, armed force. They can cry forever about reforms in our PM educational system without admitting the system is postmodern and works in such ways that with each new reform and new law we're getting further and further away from education and educating.
What to do? First, stop pretending.
PM instincts: not to study "traditional" subjects because the subjects themselves do not exits anymore. They are only the names of subjects.
How could I analyze Russian culture when there's no Russia or Russian culture anymore. It should be done by the archeology of culture, this is a task for a historian. But I can study the present phenomena of PM CIS (what is that?)
How can we study the American culture when the subject itself isn't formed yet? We can study the process. Is a popular culture an "American" culture? Or "American" in itself is a popular culture? What if there's nothing else but a popculture which indicates "America"? Too scary to think it through...
The most interesting in PM isn't the study of "subjects" but establishing them. The first task of Adam wasn't the studies of animal kingdom but the naming of the beasts. Next, it was the stage of using them. Only now we arrived to actual studies of nature.
Our paradox is in creation of subjects we have to study. Computer science is not a science in classical sense. Could we study our own inventions? Could we "discover" something in something we had constructed? The study of literature seems to say -- yes, we don't know how the hell did we do it. Wait, don't we call literature an "art"? Should we grant our "new" sciences the status of Arts?
And what about our new and most newest history? Our own custom designed creation. Eisenstein didn't create the universe to study it. Or did he?
Personally, I find the studying "old subjects" very unproductive. At first it looks that the methods are the key in my dissatisfaction with classical subjects. It's not what but how do I see (the world)? I happened to be a theatre director/playwright (please, no reflecting on those definitions). Since I happened to come from Russia it seems normal that the Russian theatre would be my area of expertise (at least in the U>S>). (Since I can't get rid off this luggage, I have to act as historian, to stop and take a good look at my shadow). What is "Russian theatre"? Or "Russian culture" today? What makes it "Russian"? Language? I have my reservations about how "Russian" is Russian language. I suspect that the language in question to a great degree is a Soviet language based on Russia language. Even more troubling, I'm not sure that it's a language at all. (I believe that the structure, the organization of this 'Language" is very different from what was knows as language.) From the values POV the present Soviet "culture" is a different subject and not a culture...
Well, my attempts to stay with traditional subjects yelled nothing. I'm better off not to consider the best known achievements in modern (post modern? 20th century) "theatre" (Meyerhold) as theatre (never mind Russian), but, lets say, a new social phenomena which looks like theatre. This cautious approach helps to understand why the texts (literature, language) are not important for Meyerhold. And why Lubimov staged only "literary compositions." What if I wouldn't see it as a theatre at all? What if it wasn't theatre?
PM is our cosmological search. Our new reality (technoculture) is an instrument, tools for research. We are the only link between the dead matter and life.
HISTORY OF THE END OF HISTORY
The more unique the culture the harder it was hit by the global village. Europe was less prepare for the globalism than America. How could Russia or China survive as nations? Communism was their baptizing into postmodern. Every country gave its little fight to history, but it always was a single nation against the rest. Each of them suffer from the same process and each of them was the cause of this "progress." This drama went on like a fire from one to another in a matter of decades. To what degree do people realize the power of the process and resist instead of welcoming it? Russia and China should learn their lessons of the recent past and not to run into the future before they would go up in total disintegration. Europe lost its borders, it's not Marx's United States of Europe, it's European market. Why should one be surprised at the impotence of the United Nations? The idea of nation is gone, only the hollow shells of states are left to pretend that they are still nations. Communism offered itself as this universal ideology of the globalism. Its not even ideology was a core but a globalization. Communism was only a moral proposition for embracing the inevitable, to be offensive not a defensive in national self-destruction.
Of course, it was enough of democracy (equality) for America, which never was a nation, to deal with the collapse of history. The real nations had to go through suicides. (Perhaps, the American Civil War should be seen as instinctive move for "union" -- the same "imperialistic" expansion of the time. The moment the nations came in actual contact, not a co-existence, the explosive nature of apocalypses had to bring them all to the rapturous end. Now America itself arrived to this level of disintegration -- and like the rest, America tries to hold it together through the state, republic, federal idea. More over-socialization, more uniformity, more laws -- as if all of it is nothing but the same process of globalization. The space collapsed because the time had disappeared. Mitsubishi factory in Ohio is no less a reality than an American military base in Japan. This acceleration dive into a global village looks like a free fall.
It comes from within as well as from outside. Identity stripped farmer in Montana or Indonesia goes for transistor radio and refrigerator, which are produced, God only knows where. Comfort of paradise corrupts. We, the proud concurs of nature, found ourselves out of control of our future. The big numbers play with us new games of different mathematics. Too many, too fast, too much.
Next: resurrect
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