Russian Theory and Semiotics of Culture: History and Perspectives

ABSTRACT

The Tartu‒Moscow School accepted as its professional attitude to reconstruct the tradition and connect itself to the forgotten or repressed cultural-scientific achievements of the period of the first decades of the 20th century. One mission of Lotman as one of the leaders of the Tartu-Moscow School was knowing and mediating forgotten heritage. In the situation of censorship many contacts between Lotman and Russian theory were not visible. Thus, the synthesis of Lotman, Tynianov, Bakhtin, Vygotsky, Eisenstein and others, in an implicit dialogue, can be the basis for the formation of the next stage of semiotics of culture. Finally, Tynjanov’s understanding of literary and cultural dynamics, Lotman’s semiotic theory of text and his thoughts about a model of space as one of the primary languages of culture, and Bakhtin’s theory of chronotope form this theoretical complex that can give new possibilities for developing both, theoretical and practical principles of cultural and textual analysis.

KEYWORDS:
Lotman; Bakhtin; Russian theory; Text; Chronotope

RESUMO

A Escola de Tártu-Moscou aceitou, como atitude profissional, reconstruir a tradição e ligar-se com as realizações - esquecidas ou reprimidas cultural e cientificamente - das primeiras décadas do séc. XX. Uma missão de Lotman como um de seus líderes foi conhecer e mediar a herança esquecida. Na situação de censura muitos contatos entre Lotman e a teoria russa não estavam visíveis. Dessa forma, a síntese de Lotman, Tynianov, Bakhtin, Vygotsky, Eisenstein e outros, num intenso diálogo implícito, pode ser a base para a formação da próxima etapa da semiótica da cultura. Enfim, a compreensão de Tynianov acerca da dinâmica literária e cultural, a teoria semiótica lotmaniana de texto e seus pensamentos sobre um modelo de espaço como uma das linguagens primárias da cultura, e a teoria bakhtiniana do cronotopo formam um complexo teórico que pode oferecer novas possibilidades para o desenvolvimento tanto dos princípios culturais teóricos e práticos quanto da análise textual.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Lotman; Bakhtin; Teoria russa; Texto; Cronotopo

1 Historical Views

In the linear history of Russian formalist school and its critical reception there exists an interruption. After the activities of the 1910-1920-ies a new interest in formalism arose in 1960s, which was associated with the name of J. Lotman and the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School. The next stage of this new interest towards formalism was represented by reprinting and commenting works written by the formalists (IVANOV, 2013, pp.15-16). In this linear historical logic the next new phase of interest paid to the heritage of Russian formalism arrived at the beginning of the 21th century, when in Yale the conference Slavic Theory Today: Between History and System (2002) was organised and in Moscow the conference Lotmanian reading (2002) took place and its papers were published under the title Russian Theory (ZENZIN, 2004).

There exists also a less linear history of Russian formalism. In his introduction to the book of abstracts of the conference dedicated to the hundred year’s birthday of Russian formalism, V. Ivanov distinguished two periods: from 1910 to the middle of the 1920-ies there was the period representing the main activity of the formalists, whereas the second half of the 1920-ies was the time of critical analysis and the corrections made by researches like L. Vygotsky and M. Bakhtin (IVANOV, 2013, pp.14-15). We can find a deep analysis of the early works of Vygotsky and Bakhtin in the context of formalism in the book of Aage Hansen-Löve, Russian Formalism (2001, pp.411-446). The inner diversity of Russian formalism created a proper dialogical space for contacts with other theoretical directions.

On this background Sergey Zenkin synthetised the theories of the 1920-ies and 1930-ies as one whole intellectual complex, calling it “Russian theory.” From his point of view the history of theory represents a cultural scientific phenomenon comprising, on the one hand, literature and art, and on the other hand, philosophy, religion and ideology. As a result, Russian theory can be described as some kind of general theoretical discourse forming a significant part of overall culture. Features of this theory are interdisciplinarity, internationality, the recoding of philosophical conceptions into scientific-theoretical conceptions (ZENKIN, 2004, pp.8-9). On the level of comparative description of different schools of 1920s and 30s exists not only theoretical and philosophical diversity but also critical relations between them. One of examples can be circle of M. Bakhtin - his own critical remarks to Russian formalism and book of Pavel Medvedev The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics [Trans. by A. Wehrle. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1978].On the more general level of description exists visible complementarity between schools and possibility to conceptualize all diversity as intellectual whole.

We can see the same type of historical conceptualisation in the field of cultural semiotics. Russian researchers V. Feshchenko and G. Tulchinsky introduced for the description of the same intellectual complex the notion of deep semiotics. For Feshchenko the first representative of deep semiotics was G. Shpet:

Shpet’s semiotic approach was developed synchronically with the major lines in European and American semiotics (loosely speaking, the Saussurian and Peircean ones), but is not sufficiently known and studied. The recent publications of previously unknown papers by Shpet make this philosopher an advanced figure on the Russian semiotic scene (FESHCHENKO, 2015, p.236).

Shpet was the first to adopt the word semiotics in Russian language in 1915, but he wasn’t alone with that:

Meanwhile, in Russia Shpet was not the only one working in the field of semiotics, poetics and philosophy of language. Features of deep semiotics are also present in the works of his contemporaries - for example, the poet Andrey Bely and the theologian Pavel Florensky. Modified versions of the conception of the inner form may be found in Wassily Kandinsky’s theory of art, as well as in scholarly writings by Lev Vygotsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, Vladimir Voloshinov, and others (FESHCHENKO, 2015, p.245).

For Tulchinsky the first important deep semiotians were Bakhtin, Florensky and Vygotsky (TULCHINSKY, 2001, p.193). These two tendencies mean that the history of Russian formalism, Russian theory and the history of cultural semiotics are interrelated.

In the first stage of the emergence of the Tartu‒Moscow School of semiotics of culture its main characteristic feature was the actualisation of the heritage of earlier cultural achievements belonging to the first three decades of 20th-century Russian humanities. The semiotic journal entitled Sign Systems Studies (edited by Juri Lotman in Tartu, beginning with 1964) as the manifestation of the new school testifies to the various directions and types of actualisation.

The first type among them was the evaluative actualisationin the form of dedicating a series of volumes to predecessors: J.Tynjanov (vol. 4, 1969), V. Propp (vol. 5, 1972), M. Bakhtin (vol. 6, 1973) and to P. Bogatyrev (vol. 7, 1975).

The second type is represented by reprint and archive publications of forgotten or unknown works, for example, by P. Florensky (vol. 3, 1967), B. Jarkho (vol. 4, 1969), B. Eikhenbaum, P. Florensky, A. Selischev, B. Tomashevsky (vol. 5, 1971), О. Freidenberg, S. Bernstein (vol. 6, 1973), and J. Mukařovský (vol. 7, 1975).

As another form of actualisation we can mention the strategy of making allusions (when we can see accentuations, examples of retaking of earlier excluded authors, or in some critical context the positive mentioning of certain exceptions, or making summaries). For example, in the first volume of Sign Systems Studies (1964) Juri Lotman had to criticise the insufficiancy of Russian formalism for political reasons, but at the same time this created for him the opportunity for placing J. Tynjanov in the position of a positive exception, saying that there is not enough evidence to state that the works of Tynjanov show the features of formalism (LOTMAN, 1964, p.10).

A further possibility was the semiotisation of the heritage. We can see that in the book of abstracts of the semiotic conference held in 1962 in Moscow, where in the section defined as Art as Semiotic System the abstract was written by L. Vygotsky under the title Psychology of Art (The analysis of aesthetic reaction), the relevant part in reality was compiled by V. Ivanov on the basis of Vygotsky’s unpublished manuscript. This proves to be a retrospective semiotisation of a material written in 1925 and so obviously not representing a semiotic formulation of the 60-ies. Vygotsky like also Bakhtin, Tynianov, Propp and many others became in the semiotic publications examples of the roots of Tartu-Moscow semiotics.

We can also speak about the generalisation of the heritage, covering the use of notions at a more general level. For example, Juri Lotman in his book Analysis of the Poetic Text (in Russian:1972, English transl. 1976) applied the notion of polyphony as a general notion. If for Bakhtin the notion of polyphony characterised the specificity of Dostoevsky’s poetics, for Lotman it acquired the trait of generality and universality: “In a text a polylogue of different systems is constantly taking place; different modes of the explanation and systematization of the world, different pictures of the world, come into conflict. The poetic (belletristic) text is in principle polyphonic” (LOTMAN, 1976, p.109).

The enumerated forms of actualisation demonstrate that the Tartu‒Moscow School accepted as its mission to reconstruct the tradition and connect itself to the forgotten or repressed cultural-scientific achievements of the period of the first decades of the 20th century. On the basis of these facts it is rightful to deny that Tartu‒Moscow School was a neo-formalistic project. Its members made an effort to synthetise all of the crucial directions of theoretical thinking in humanities:

Structural-semiotic literary criticism takes into consideration the experience of all preceding literary scholarship. It has, however, its own specific character. It arose in the environment of that scientific revolution that has marked the middle of the twentieth century and is organically connected with the ideas and methodology of structural linguistics, semiotics, information theory and cybernetics (LOTMAN, 1976, p.16).

This synthetic evaluation of the cultural legacy accentuated by Lotman can be related to some contemporary conceptualisations of Russian formalism and cultural semiotics taken from the genetic point of view.

In the context of same logic in 1972 Juri Lotman uses the notion Russian School for describing the international reception of J. Tynjanov, V. Propp, M. Bakhtin, R. Jakobson and other thinkers (LOTMAN, 1972, p.12). At the same time, Lotman also discovered the close relationship between cultural and scientific discourses in the Prague Linguistic Circle, referred to as the Czech and Slovak school of literary studies. In his opinion there is a close relationship between the type of culture and the type of general theory (School). One year later, in 1973 the collective Theses on the Semiotic Study of Cultures (as Applied to Slavic Texts) written by Ju. Lotman, V. Ivanov, A. Pjatigorskij, V. Toporov, B. Uspenskij were published. The last paragraph (9.1.0 in this document) was absent in the English version of 1973 and makes the following statement:

Scientific investigation is not only an instrument for the study of culture but is also part of its object. Scientific texts, being metatexts of the culture, may at the same time be regarded as its texts. Therefore any significant scientific idea may be regarded both as an attempt to cognize culture and as a fact of its life through which its generating mechanisms take effect. From this point of view we might raise the question of modern structural-semiotic studies as phenomena of Slavic culture (the role of the Czech, Slovak, Polish, Russian, and other traditions) (IVANOV et al., 2013, p.77).

This means methodologically that the semiotics of culture of the Tartu‒Moscow School from the sixties and seventies was oriented towards an ad hoc semiotics, creating theories on the basis of the specificity of a given culture related to the theory elaborated by Russian formalists and remaining a scientific-cultural heritage.

2 Russian Theory and the Historical Formation of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics

In the context of cultural semiotics we have two models of historical developments [cf. International Context of History of Cultural Semiotics (Torop, 2015)]. From the narrower point of view semiotics of culture is a result of a process rooted in Russian Formalism and going through Prague Linguistic Circle, Roman Jakobson and Tartu‒Moscow School of semiotics. This viewpoint explains the general logic of the emergence and development of cultural semiotics thinking. From a wider point of view the Tartu‒Moscow School both in an implicit and an explicit way relies on the complex of Russian Theory. This idea had been implied in the evaluations of the development of the Tartu‒Moscow School well before it was clearly voiced by contemporary researchers. What is more, the range of culture involved in Russian Theory can be enlarged involving such scientific disciplines as cybernetics, information theory etc.

From all this follows that Russian Formalism as a core scientific experience for the development of Tartu‒Moscow School, cannot be interpreted separately as distanced from the broader context of Russian Theory as such. Russian Theory itself can be evaluated only in terms of its processual development, similarly to that how Russian Formalism itself can be seen in this complex of Russian Theory as going through several phases in its evolution.

Within the framework of the Tartu‒Moscow School one can discern two orientations to Russian Formalism. On the one hand, the new methods of linguo-semiotic analysis relied on Russian Formalism, paying great attention to V. Shklovsky with the focus on his notion of device (prijom). Lotman called this direction the strategy of orientation towards the formal semiotic analysis of simple, elementary research objects. As examples can be analyses of linguistic behaviour in absurd drama, structure of chess or criminal stories, etc. This belonged to the Moscow part of the Tartu‒Moscow School involving many structuralist linguists (LOTMAN, 1991, p.91). On the other hand, there existed an orientation towards complex research objects. If the first trend was dominated by linguistic studies, the second direction outlined investigations into literary studies and cultural semiotics. This also meant the actualisation from Russian formalism first the heritage of its initial stage, and with the emergence of cultural semiotics, the later achievements from the evolutionary process of Russian Formalism. This second orientation belonged to Petersburg-Leningrad tradition and includes also representatives of Russian theory like Propp, Freidenberg, Bakhtin and others (LOTMAN, 1991, p.91).

Consequently, it has its deep motivation that Juri Lotman and his colleagues often allude to Juri Tynyanov, Roman Jakobson and M.Bakhtin. The disciplinary identification of cultural semiotics was formulated in the collective Theses of 1973 and can be evaluated as the development of cultural dynamics interpreted by Tynjanov and Jakobson. According to this programmatic text cultural semiotics is “[…] the study of the functional correlation of different sign systems. From this point of view particular importance is attached to questions of the hierarchical structure of the languages of culture” (IVANOV et al, 2013, p.53). In the preparatory texts for the final version of the Theses certain key problems in the semiotic understanding of culture were treated:

1. Description of the place of some semiotic system in the general complex. It is easy to imagine studies such as: The place of music as a semiotic system in the general system of culture; The place of mathematics in culture as a semiotic unity.

2. Description of the influence of some particular semiotic system on others, i.e. The role of painting in the semiotics of poetry of this or that era, The role of cinema in the structure of the language of contemporary culture.

3. Analysis of the irregularity of the internal organization of culture. The existence of culture as a unitary organism seems to presuppose the existence of internal structural diversity. Investigating the phenomenon of intra-cultural polyglotism and the reasons for its necessity. (IVANOV et al, 2003, p.42).

The fourth volume of Sign Systems Studies is dedicated to Jurij Tynyanov, with the preface stressing the importance of his works, which, in the opinion of the editors, “is directly related to the structural-semiotic analysis of cultural and liter ary texts” (REDKOLLEGIJA, 1969, p.5). There are several concepts that are related to semiotics of culture and that have gained new relevance against the background of culture’s developmental dynamics, related to one of the leading figures of Russian Formalism, Jurij Tynyanov. In his article Literary Fact from 1924 he wrote: “Literary fact is heterogeneous, and in this sense literature is an incessantly evolutioning order” (TINIANOV, 1977, p.270). Understanding of literary order or system is very close to the notion of function: “A literary system is first of all a system of the functions of the literary order which are in continual interrelationship with other orders” (TINIANOV, 1977, p.277; emphasis in original).

Literary order is just one functional order together with the order of everyday life, the order of culture, the social order. The study of literary evolution presupposes the investigation of connections first of all between the closest neighbouring or ders or systems, and a logical path leads from the structural to the literary func tion, from the literary to the verbal function. As predecessors to semiotics of culture, Tynyanov’s works are also where the idea of conceiving cultural artefacts through the dynamics of boundaries is derived from. A text can be delineated in different ways as a text in a certain language, as a representative of a certain literary genre, as an expression of a literary-historical style, as a social message, as an artistic text - in other words, conceptualised and correlated with the cultural environment to different extents.

3 The Problem of Text

J.Tynyanov’s system of orders is one of the sources of hierarchical understanding of culture and system of cultural languages. Central notion of cultural semiotics is text and early semiotics of artistic text consisted of many elements taken from Russian Formalism together with Russian theory. Early Lotman’s semiotics of text and semiotics of culture are understandable as the synthesis of Tynyanov, Jakobson and Bakhtin. It means that the text in semiotics of culture is also a complex notion. The text as a whole comes into being in the point of contact of inner- and extratextual relations. It means that the text is a ternary whole: 1) it is made from some material (like language is material of literature), 2) it is used in a very specific way (artistic structure), 3) it emerges in some cultural-historical context (author’s worldview, biography, influences etc). In result we can see a difference between three meanings: subtextual, textual and functional. Meanings are based on the structure of material, text and work. Structure is a hierarchical phenomenon and every hierarchy is based on the dominant. The structure of the text is interpretable from one side comparatively with the structure of the material (material dominant) and the structure of the work (functional dominant). From the other side, the structure of the text is analytically describable as copmpositional (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, etc), architectonical (title, epigraph, prologue, chapters, epilogue, etc) or narrative (plot, story). The next level is the poetics of the text or the conceptual artistic whole. Poetics is based on textual and intertextual specificity and proceeds from the conceptual value of the structural features of the text.

These historically traditional aspects of text are already described in article Semiotics of cultural history (TOROP, 2017, pp.320-321). In the context of perspectives there are two other important aspects of texts. In a contemporary culture and especially in a web same text exists usually in very different discursive versions and became to interdiscursive phenomenon. This situation of disourses in a text and text in discourses was partly described before internet age by Bakhtin. Same environment is reason for researching mentality of text. Texts exist not only in one media but in many. From one side divergence of text bases on the purpose- or target-oriented activity (for example in marketing and education - crossmediality), from other side divergence bases on the interests of different consumers to create secondary texts (pictures, music, film and theater adaptations, translations, comicses, parodies etc - transmediality). In both cases text is result also of processes of convergence (cf Pearson, Smith 2015; Jenkins 2006) and in a collective memory exists also image of text as mental whole (Figure 1).

Figure 1
Complexity of text.

This scheme describes text construction and potential interdiscursivity and transmediality. The model of text as a complex structure in semiotics of culture is in historical correlation with theory of Russian Formalism in general but also actualizes different aspects of this theory or mechanistic, morphological, systemic and linguistic models described by Peter Steiner:

The mechanistic, morphological, and systemic models are metaphors: they assume a similarity between the literary work and machines, organisms, or hierarchical systems. The linguistic model, on the other hand, is a synecdoche based on a pars pro toto relation. It substitutes language - the material of verbal art - for art itself, and linguistics - the science of language - for literary studies. The linguistic model and its crucial concept of “poetic language” proved to be extremely powerful and not only for Formalist poetics but for Prague Structuralism and later Structuralist poetics (STEINER, 1980-81, pp.113-114).

Steiner saw already in earliest reception of Russian Formalism implicit semiotic aspect: “We have seen that both the Bakhtinians and the Prague Structuralists redefined the primary principle of Formalist literary science from a semiotic perspective“ (STEINER, 2004, p.27).

4 Importance of Space

Cultural experience is directly related to the way cultural languages are cultivated in a given society during a given historical period, as the richness of cultural languages is related to the increase of the multiplicity and richness of the culture’s self-descriptive processes. Cultural experience exists in the cultural environment and cultural processes in this environment are the main research objects of disciplines studying culture: “Genetically speaking, culture is built upon two primary languages. One of these is the natural language used by humans in everyday communication. […] The nature of the second primary language is not so obvious. What is under discussion is the structural model of space“ (LOTMAN, 1992, p.142). The structural model of space is reconstructable on the bases of Bakhtin’s fragments about space, time and chronotope. The dominant of the model of space is complementarity between notions heterotopy - homotopy - polytopy. Heterotopy has the integrative function in this complementarity (Figure 2).

Figure 2
The spatial aspect of chronotopical analysis.

Communication happens in a space, texts exist in a space and every text is a space or hierarchy of spaces. First and foremost, Lotman had in mind textual spaces, yet time is also important in a textual space, as time and space constitute the two main analytical parameters of culture and research into culture and chronotope is a synthetical parameter. The chronotopical approach enriches both textual research and research into culture. After having been introduced in Bakhtin’s works, chronotopical analysis became particularly relevant again in connection with an interest in intersemiotic analysis (cf Keunen, 2010).

A chronotopical analysis in principle distinguishes three levels in every text. The topographical chronotope is related to the story, the depiction of an event or a succession of events, the psychological chronotope expresses the viewpoints of the characters, and the metaphysical chronotope determines the conception of the text through the interrelations between the different chronotopical levels. Since the chronotopical levels are not related to the material of texts, this type of analysis is particularly rewarding in comparing texts consisting of different materials. So, one of the fundamental principles underlying the conception of the semiotics of culture is Bakhtin’s chronotope, or space-time.

For the deeper understanding of the poetics and the artistic thinking of the author it is important to see in the construction of text not only the organised space but also the system of realities (worlds). But space doesn’t exist without time. The chronotopical model of time as complementarity between heterochrony - homochrony - polychrony (TOROP, 2017, p.330). The Bakhtinian heritage helps to develop contemporary semiotics of culture in understanding culture and text as time-spatial or chronotopical systems. Chronotopical levels are also hierarchically organized and dominants can belong to time, space or timespace (chronotope). That is a reason why for a holistic view of the text through its chronotopical system it is so important to establish an elementary typology of time and space as part of the chronotopical system (Figure 3).

Figure 3
Chronotopical system

The model of the chronotopical system is an attempt to synthesize especially fragments about chronotope written by Bakhtin on single pages (1973). The programmatic work of Bakhtin about chronotope Forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel was mainly written in 1937-1938; from 1970-1971 among different notes we can find some valuable ones for developing the concept of chronotope. Concluding remarks were written in 1973 and from the same time is known the mentioned collection of fragments on single pages about chronotope. This work was published posthumously. Chronotope becomes a tool of the holistic analysis of both, the text and the culture: “World (chronotope) as environment of characters and world (chronotope) as horizon of the author“ (BAKHTIN, 2012, p.506). In these fragments, a definite attempt to create a methodological framework for chronotopical analysis is visible:

Chronotopicality of thinking (especially ancient). A viewpoint is chronotopical, i.e. it embraces both the aspects of space and time. This is in direct relation with axiological (hierarchical) viewpoint (attitude towards the high and the low). The chronotope of a depicted event, the chronotope of the narrator, and the chronotope of the author […] (BAKHTIN, 2002, p.393) [cf. Morson; Emerson, 1990; Holquist, 1994].

Textual aspect consists analytical value of chronotopes as cognitive tools: topographical chronotope as visibility the reality depicted in the text, psychological chronotope as markedness or unmarkedness of the characters’ viewpoints, metaphysical chronotope as the manner of the realization of the author’s conception, or the creation of a new conception of text on this chronotopical level. The extratextual aspect is present also in Bakhtin’s disquisitions:

The work and the world represented in it enter the real world and enrich it, and the real world enters the work and its world as part of the process of its creation, as well as part of its subsequent life, in a continual renewing of the work through the creative perception of listeners and readers. Of course this process of exchange is itself chronotopic […]. We might even speak of a special creative chronotope inside which this exchange between work and life occurs, and which constitutes the distinctive life of the work (BAKHTIN, 1981, p.254).

Every text has implicit or explicit coexistence of the word and the picture, or narrative and performance. The basic semiotic binarities in defining montage mechanisms are discreteness and continuity on the level of language, textuality and processuality on the level of text, and narrativity and performativity on the level of semiosphere. Chronotopical levels constitute differences what exist in texts between the topographical storyworld as a reality, the individual worlds or subjectivity of the perception of the world by participants in events, and the conceptual world or authorial synthesis of all aspects of text. The contact between the vertical and horizontal levels is a sphere of semiotization (Figure 4).

Figure 4
Chronotopical levels of text and sphere of semiotization.

Semiotization (and semantization) means that on the topographical level of chronotope storyworld is at the same time the world of signs - things, names, situations, behaviour. On the psychological level of chronotope innerworld is the world of semiotic states, thoughts, words of heroes, and on the metaphysical level of chronotope conceptual world is the world of hypertheme of the author. Chronotopical analysis approximates us to complex understanding of text and its meaning generating mechanism.

Creative chronotope as extratextual tool helps to understand readability or consumability of text in different situations. Lotman developed this type of thinking and wrote in his programmatic article The Semiotics of Culture and the Notion of Text (1981) that

the sociocommunicative function of a text becomes considerably more complicated. It may be reduced to the following processes: 1. Communication between addressant and addressee. A text fulfills the function of a message from the bearer of information to the audience. 2. Communication between the audience and the cultural tradition. A text fulfills the function of a collective cultural memory. In this capacity it discloses a capacity for continual replenishment and for retrieving some aspects of the information stored in it and temporarily or totally forgetting others. 3. Communication of the reader with himself. A text-this is especially important for traditional, ancient texts distinguished by their high degree of canonicity-retrieves certain aspects of the personality of the addressee himself. During this type of communication of the recipient of information with himself, a text plays the role of mediator, helping to reorganize the personality of the reader and change its structural self-orientation and the extent of its links with metacultural constructions. 4.Communication of the reader with the text. Manifesting intellectual properties, a highly organized text ceases to be merely a mediator in the act of communication. It becomes an interlocutor on an equal footing, possessing a high degree of autonomy. For the both the author (addressant) and the reader (addressee), it may work as an independent intellectual structure, playing an active and independent role in dialogue. Inthis respect, the ancient metaphor of “conversing with a book” turns out to be fraught with profound meaning. 5. Communication between a text and the cultural context. In this case the text is not an agent of a communicative act, but a fullfledged participant in it, as a source or a receiver of information (LOTMAN, 1988, pp.55-56).

There exists another direction of development of conception of creative chronotope (Bakhtin) and sociocultural processes of reading and reception (Lotman). Cultural experience turns out in cultural environment. Cultural environment is some balance between immediate and mediated culture. Dynamics of cultural mediation means that there is more and more important to talk not only about plurality of sociocultural processes but also about plurality of sources. Elementary communication is becoming to intercommunication, to shared sources.

Text can exist in the cultural space as intersemiotic whole what is not only readable but also watchable, audible and perceptible in different forms. These intersemiotic, intermedial versions of a same text are available simultaneously in the web or on the digital platforms and form transmedia world. And in some sense we are back in finding answers to questions asked before by Russian formalists, Bakhtin, Vygotsky and other participators of Russian theory. New media change

the status of texts in multiplatform production and consumption environments. When texts become more complicated and narratives are told across platforms, what are the consequences for our abilities to undertake textual analysis? Where are the limits of multiplatform texts, and how are we to construct the unit for textual analysis? Where can we draw the boundary between text and context? What narratives can be considered transmedia stories, and which need to be described in other terms? (BOLIN, 2010, p.74).

Computer platform and multiplatforms are this new cultural space where reading of multiple versions of text happens in very short (compressed) time and this is a new situation of creative chronotope, chronotope in transmedia world (OJAMAA; TOROP, 2015).

Conclusion: Perspectives of Cultural Semiotics through Prism of Russian Theory

Intermediality as new reality of culture is one of the reasons why textual and cultural analysis needs new tools for developing analysability. Tynjanov’s understanding of literary and cultural dynamics, Lotman’s semiotic theory of text and his thoughts about a model of space as one of the primary languages of culture, and Bakhtin’s theory of chronotope form this theoretical complex that can give new possibilities for developing both, theoretical and practical principles of cultural and textual analysis.

Russian Theory and Semiotics of Culture constitute according to the argumentation of this article one system with complementary components. The last three sentences of the manifesto of Tynianov and Jakobson titled Problems in the Study of Language and Literature (1928) can be interpreted as a historical introduction to the program of the Tartu-Moscow School from 1973:

The question of a specific choice of path, or at least of the dominant, can be solved only through an analysis of the correlation between the literary series and other historical series. This correlation (a system of systems) has its own structural laws, which must be submitted to investigation. It would be methodologically fatal to consider the correlation of systems without taking into account the immanent laws of each system (JAKOBSON, 1985, pp.26-27).

For the next implicit historical part of the program of cultural semiotics we can take Jakobson’s semiotic interpretion embedded in his model of communication from 1967:

The question of presence and hierarchy of those basic functions which we observe in language - fixation upon the referent, code, addresser, addressee, their contact or, finally, upon the message itself- must be applied also to the other semiotic systems. In particular, a comparative analysis of structures determined by a predominant fixation upon the message (artistic function) or, in other words, a parallel investigation of verbal, musical, pictorial, choreographic, theatrical, and filmic arts belongs to the most imperative and fruitful duties of the semiotic science (JAKOBSON, 1971, pp.621-622).

Cultural semiotics after Lotman has good possibility to develop its own disciplinary methodology on the strength of the heritage from Russian Theory (cf. Kroó, Torop, 2018). The semiotic understanding of culture as hierarchy of sign systems (cultural languages), from one side, and isomorphism of individual and culture as collective personality, from the other, actualises the importance of the knowledge of one’s own heritage. One possibility of this is the systematic analysis of the terminological field, the history of metalanguage. A good example would be in Lotman’s text definition how he turns to the notions of material and work of art for describing the two sides of text. Both notions were keywords of the Formalist school (look: Glossary, 1977) and at the same time also very important notions for Russian theory, especially for Bakhtin (RENFREW, 2006). Not only early Lotman but also the author of Culture and explosion can be more deeply understood on the background of Russian theory because the notion of explosion was implicitly but actively used by many authors of 1920-ies. In contemporary interpretation these possible sources of Lotman were not explicated.

The other possibility for future development is the movement toward the semiotic science of culture. Heritage can be an innovative tool in this process. For example, the notion of semiosphere stems from the dynamic nature of the notion of text and for Lotman it was making closer contacts between space (textual, cultural, semiotic) and time (synchrony, diachrony, achrony). The last books by Lotman are about dynamics and processuality. But ambiguity of the boundary of terminological field of semiosphere (biosphere, social sphere, semiosphere, noosphere, semiotic space) is a reason why conceptual development of this conception is important. One possibility is the chronotopical analysis of text and chronotopical theory of culture. This is why in this article the notion of chronotope has such a central place.

One mission of Lotman as one of the leaders of the Tartu-Moscow School was knowing and mediating forgotten heritage. In the situation of censorship many contacts between Lotman and Russian theory were not visible. We can find intensive implicit dialogue between Lotman, on the one side, and Tynianov, other formalists, Bakhtin and Vygotsky, on the other. A better knowing of Russian Theory makes for us more understandable Lotman’s heritage. And what is important for future semiotics, the synthesis of Lotman, Tynianov, Bakhtin, Vygotsky, Eisenstein and others can be the basis for the formation of the next stage of semiotics of culture.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  14 Nov 2019
• Date of issue
  Oct-Dec 2019

History

• Received
  13 Aug 2018
• Accepted
  17 Aug 2019