Corpus Mundi

Modular Bodies of Animated Characters and Posthumanist Connotations. Translation into Russian

Ahmet Oktan — 2023-12-25

This article discusses the molecularization of the body and the meanings pointed out via cyborg bodies in the context of animated characters. We analyze films of Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995), Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045- Sustainable War (Shinji Aramaki Michihito and Fujii Kenji Kamiyama, 2021), Gunnm (Hiroshi Fukutomi, 1993), and Alita: Battle Angel (Robert Rodriguez, 2019) in the context of related philosophical discussions. We carry out the discussion about the body on two axes. First, we examine forms of presenting the modular bodies and discuss their socio-cultural connections. In these narratives, the evolution of the body beyond organic boundaries transforms it into a space where the character reflects the subjectivity and a tool that offers a narcissistic experience of omnipotence regarding bodily strength and competence. However, it sometimes causes the characters to become alienated from their bodies and engage in existential inquiries. Thus, secondly, we examine the existential inquiries/crises of the characters arising from the modularization of their bodies and the philosophical connotations that these emphases indicate. If on this axis, posthumanist arguments that stand out with objections to Cartesian distinctions such as machine-human, mind-body, woman-man, and anthropocentric approaches constitute the focus of the discussions.

The Hopping Dead. Zombies in the Chinese Culture. Translation into English

Asia A. Sarakaeva — 2023-12-25

The article examines the image of zombies in Chinese culture, the traditional perception of their appearance and internal characteristics. A wide scope of written sources served as the basis of the study: inscriptions on oracle bones, ancient fortune-telling calendars, historical treatises, chronicles and commentaries on chronicles, essays on geography and medicine, fiction of old and modern China, as well as entries and comments from the Chinese blogosphere.

The authors examine how the idea of evil spirits (with a body or bodiless ones) first appeared in the religious worldview of the ancient Chinese, and trace its origin to the doctrine of existence of multiple souls in one person. The article also details the formation of the pictorial image of Chinese zombies: animated corpses covered with hair or dressed as government officials, with their arms extended forward, hopping on straight legs unable to bend their knees. As for the functional characteristics of zombies, the authors discuss not only their well-known features (e.g., cannibalism), but also their deep inner connection with water and drought. In conclusion, the authors explore the evolution of zombies in modern urban legends and demonstrate the continuity of traditional demonology that develops into modern narrative.

Apart from that, the article contains a number of analogies and comparisons of the Chinese image of zombies with other nations’ mythological tradition.

Corporeal Representations of Lenin in Post‑Soviet Ideological Games

Ivan V. Suslov — 2023-12-25

This article discusses the significance of the study of Lenin's corporeality in the context of mass and elite culture of the post-Soviet space. The author highlights the importance of understanding the role of Lenin's images in the ideological and political context and suggests analyzing them using theoretical tools. The article also shows that interest in Lenin's images persists in contemporary mass and elite culture, being realized in such strategies of representation of Lenin's bodily aspects as phantasmagoric mystification, “skomoroshchestvo”, annihilation and dehumanization.

The phantasmagoric strategy of representing the leader of the world proletariat includes attempts to depict Lenin in unusual and paradoxical bodily images, often with elements of fantasy and mystification. The strategy of “skomoroshchestvo” allows researchers and artists to play with Lenin's image and reinterpret it in a comical and absurd way. The strategy of annihilation emphasizes the contrasting views and emotions associated with Lenin's image in the contemporary world and provokes discussions about the boundaries of art, symbolism and respect for historical figures. The strategy of dehumanizing Lenin in the representation of his corporeal image is expressed in transformations that take him away from his human historical context and reduce him to an object of irony, satire and symbolic associations.

Raising awareness in public health: A study of Beijing Health Commission Weibo communications during the 2022 COVID-19 wave in Beijing. Translation into Russian

Lixiong Chen — 2023-12-25

The public demands of information will increase during the crisis and the social media accounts run by governmental sectors is one of the major sources where the public obtains information. This study focuses on the practices of Beijing health commission, an authoritative official outlet, in posting COVID-19 related information from a governmental stance. We explore the content of these social media posts and manner of posting during the COVID-19 crisis. Based on a data set of 1,422 Weibo posts related to the early 2022 COVID-19 wave in Beijing, we identified the theme of reports of confirmed cases and travel paths, and propagandistic objective as the most prominent. From analysed posts and the identified themes, the preliminary findings suggested that the government gave its priority to maintain its legitimacy during the crisis. Thus, by borrowing the concept of paternalism, we argued that arising the public’s attention of crisis is what government applied to achieve its propaganda goal, which aims to practicing its paternalistic governance in China.

The Unpredictable Corporeal Topos. A Review of F. Bork Petersen's Book “Body Utopianism. Prosthetic Being Between Enhancement and Estrangement

Olesya S Yakushenkova — 2023-12-25

This is a review of Franziska Bork-Petersen's book “Body Utopianism. Prosthetic Being Between Enhancement and Estrangement”, which discusses the changes in corporeality and the use of various tools that have become an important part of contemporary culture. It explores the relationship between culture, the transformation of corporeality and our perception of these changes. The book offers an interesting perspective on the changing corporeality of the contemporary world and its socio-cultural implications.

Notes on the Body and Corporeality in Dystopia

Artur A. Dydrov — 2023-07-10

The article is devoted to the body and corporality in the genre of dystopia (literary and audiovisual works). The study is an extract from an unpublished monographic work on body images, manipulations, procedures, processes, and marginal, specific objects that shape the interiors of dystopian worlds. Analytics and conceptual generalizations are carried out on the example of specific cases – classic novels by Stanislav Lem, George Orwell, Evgeny Zamyatin and relatively new works by James Dashner and Andrey Dashkov. The arbitrary choice of authors and books is determined by the specifics of the cultural and philosophical approach and the desire to avoid the dominance of totalizing logic and ideas. The general and arbitrary logic of cases is constituted by a conditional sequence of various objects – operations, procedures, body locations (topology) and marginals. Together, these objects, directly related to the physicality of the characters, form a specifically dystopian interior.

The Corporeality of the Domestic Vampire in the Context of Soviet Nostalgia

Sophia V. Tikhonova — 2023-07-10

The article deals with the analysis of the corporeality of Russian vampires, naturalized in the domestic serial cinema at the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century. The vampire was a marginal character in the Russian cultural tradition of the 19th century, combining folkloric traits with stable motifs of the Western Gothic novel. In Soviet culture, he was a total stranger, since he belonged to the subcensorship theme of mysticism and anti-Soviet propaganda. The vampire expansion of the 1990s strengthened the vampire myth as a Westernized project that assimilated poorly and slowly into domestic soil. Only a reinterpretation of the Soviet Union's image as part of Soviet nostalgia led to a flowering of the national vampire theme. This investigation is aimed at assembling the social body of the vampire clan (Vampires of the Middle Zone, 2021, 2022) into a single whole by means of Soviet nostalgia, which requires us to reconsider the contemporary trends in the dynamics of the canonical corporeality of the vampire in Western mass culture and to apply them to the Soviet-oriented model of Russian history. The author demonstrates the peculiarities of the Smolensk vampire's corporeality. It is interpreted as a tool of his adaptation to human society and, at the same time, the formation of his own family sociality. The author concludes that sovietism is a way of distributing the clan's social functions and a strategy of axiological marking of personal relationships.

The Beauty, the Beast and the Cinema. “The Chain Scheme” in Chinese Literature and Cinematography. Part 2

Elina A. Sarakaeva — 2023-07-10

In the first part of the work, entitled “The Beauty, the Beast and the Red Hare” published in “Corpus Mundi” Vol. 3(2), 2022, I trace the origin of the “Chain Scheme” legend in the Chinese historical chronicles, analyze the development of the plot in the poetry, fiction and other works of art and make conclusions about the interpretation of the main characters’ morals and motivations in pre-modern Chinese culture. In the present paper, which is the second part of the same research, I analyze artistic devices and narrative tropes in TV versions of “Three Kingdoms”, I comment on the changes that the plot has undergone in the course of history and especially in modern TV-dramas and make some conclusions as to the clash of traditional and modern value systems.

The Vampire, a Mythical Monster for Eternity

Victoria Hurtado — 2023-07-10

The purpose of this paper is a new approach from an interdisciplinary standpoint to the long lasting phenomena of the vampires. Consequently, I have drawn on from multiple sources in history, folklore, literary studies and anthropology. As monsters, they have been analysed in the light of their symbolic meaning. Previous studies place them in realms of mythical thinking and belonging to a liminal state of the nature-culture classification. As undead, their specificity is to trespass sides, a matter of fear for the living. Although we want to consider our civilization as rational and free from superstition, undead keep coming back through different narrative media. I will try to address that question by emphasising the liminality of death and the allure of immortality. The chosen case of research is Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) and the film adaptation directed by Francis Ford Coppola (1992). By comparing the changes in the characters and the plot I have tried to frame them as different versions along the history of a myth. Any social order need to set boundaries but, being humans, we are tempted to trespass at least through fiction.

Mythological. Anthropological. Bodily. Review of A.M. Lobok's Book “The Anthropology of Myth”

Sofya A. Rezvushkina — 2023-07-10

This paper reviews A.M. Lobok's monograph, The Anthropology of Myth. It was published in 1997 in Ekaterinburg by the publishing house Bank of Cultural Information, but is still little known in the scientific community and belongs to the philosophical underground. This has necessitated the creation of a review work to present The Anthropology of Myth to a wider readership. Despite an almost quarter-century gap between the year of publication and the present, the reviewed monograph is one of the most interdisciplinary to date and may be of interest to researchers specialising in mythology, general myth theory, philosophical anthropology, cultural philosophy, physical anthropology, pedagogy and body studies.

Review of the Book “Monsters and Monarchs: Serial Killers in Classical Myths and History”

Irena V. Lebedeva — 2023-07-10

Serial killers have been a popular topic in literature for centuries, appearing in works of fiction, non-fiction, and even poetry. In literature, serial killers often represent the dark side of human nature, and their stories often explore the depths of depravity and the psychological motivations behind their heinous acts. Examples of serial killers can be found throughout history and mythology. With all that the public’s attention is usually focused on the serial murders of the latest decades, with the historical cases still generally remaining in the obscure. The reason for that lack of publicity is that serial killers in antiquity are difficult to identify, because the concept of serial killing is a relatively modern one. One of the pleasant exceptions is a book by Debbie Felton “Monsters and Monarchs: Serial Killers in Classical Myths and History” published by University of Texas Press, 2021, 235 pp., ISBN: 978-1-4773-2357-1 (paperback edition). This article reviews the book and comments on its contents and style.

Ethnographicity of a National Political Body

Maksym W. Kyrchanoff — 2022-12-22

The author analyzes cultural tactics and strategies aimed at the nationalization of the body in public, political and cultural spaces. The images of the national, nationalizing and nationalized body in modern cultures and spaces of memory are analyzed. The purpose of the study is to analyze visual strategies for the nationalization of the body in the intellectual histories of Central and Eastern Europe in the second half of the 19th and early 21st centuries. Geographically, the article is limited to the analysis of the politically motivated nationalizations of corporality in the greater Eastern and Central European cultural contexts. The chronological and geographical framework is motivated by the need to detect both continuity and discreteness in the nationalization of the body in the political cultures of the region, as well as general trends and regional characteristics of cultural and political practices, the author analyze in the article. The article shows that the historical and cultural prerequisites for the nationalization of the body developed in the 17th and 18th centuries within the framework of the “high” political culture, which operated with the images of great ancestors, projecting onto clothes as an element of socially acceptable physicality. The author believes that by the beginning of the 21st century, the nationalization of physicality express itself in several strategies, including the visualization of traditional ethnicity and the actualization of elements of modern political culture, which combine the visualization of biological signs of physicality in their combination with elements of a personality cult.

The Beauty, the Beast and the Red Hare. The 'Chain Scheme' in Chinese Literature and Cinematography. Part 1

Elina A. Sarakaeva — 2022-12-22

The Chinese historical chronicle “The Annals of the Three kingdoms” relates the last years of Han dynasty before the country fell into chaos. According to the Chronicle, a frontier general Dong Zhuo marched with his troops to the capital and took control over the boy emperor. He wanted to get rid of his rival general Ding Yuan, so he bribed his officers with gifts and promises. A young junior officer Lü Bu killed general Ding and presented his head to Dong Zhuo. The daring and unscrupulous officer enjoyed the favours of the usurper, he became his adopted son and was placed at the head of cavalry. To his misfortune, Dong Zhuo’s uncontrolled temper threatened the very life of his closest henchmen. Besides, Lü Bu’s regiments didn’t enjoy benefits they expected and that annoyed the soldiers and their new commander. Finally, Lü Bu started a secret affair with a court lady and was afraid to be exposed. So, when minister Wang Yun asked him to kill the tyrant, Lü Bu agreed. Following Wan Yun’s plan, he killed Dong Zhuo with his own hands. This story was masterfully re-worked in Luo Guangzhong’s great epic “The Three Kingdoms”. The writer dramatized the plot and turned the nameless court lady into a renowned beauty Diao Chan who plays the key role in the conspiracy. According to the novel, Diao Chan seduced Lü Bu and later married Dong Zhuo to set the tyrant and his powerful bodyguard against each other. This scheme was called “The Chain Scheme”, for the idea was to break the chain between the male characters with the help of female charms. The Chain Scheme is the most stylistically strong and textually rich episode; in the course of Chinese history it served as a plot to masterful works of fiction and in 20th-21st centuries got numerous TV adaptations. In the present paper I analyse artistic devices and narrative tropes in literature versions of Chain Scheme plot, paying attention to the visual images of the characters, especially their bodily representations as well as the psychological interpretations of their actions. In the Part II of the work I hope to do the same for the screen versions of the Chain Scheme story.

The Evidence of the Dead Body. On Moral Consciousness and Legal Practice in the Qing China

Asia Sarakaeva — 2022-12-22

The article is a case history study. Basing on a well-documented criminal case of 1809, the author explores such issues as corruption in the ranks of Chinese officials; effectiveness of severe punishments for crime prevention; the methods criminal offences were committed and investigated in the Qing empire, and the level of public awareness of these methods; principles of sentencing; and the issue of crime and punishment in the mass consciousness of the Chinese in the late 17th and early 19th centuries. Special attention is paid to a remarkable phenomenon of fictionalizing of a real incident in witness reports, i.e. the introduction of popular moral, didactic and religious motifs widely known in the folklore and literature of that time.

Animals and Humans

Anastasiya A. Lokteva — 2022-12-22

In recent years, Animal Studies experts have concluded that unique personalities and subjectivity exist in all species, not only in humans. Throughout the “long 19th century”, the attitude of man to the animal was the attitude of the obviously higher being – the “king of nature” – to the lower. This model has developed in the highest Russian society due to fashion for everything European, primarily English.

In addition to those animals whose bodies were consumed for food, the main role belonged to horses, without the use of whose energy it was impossible to travel.

In addition to expensive horses, the wealthy kept monkeys, peacocks, deer, bears and even wolves. The ownership of these economically “useless” creatures helped confirm the social status of the owner.

The bond of people with animals in the status of a pet, which could become a family member, was especially close and mutual.

The culture of relations with animals was different for men, women and children.

Review of the Monograph “Women and Family Life in Early Modern German Literature” by Elisabeth W. Nivre

Irena V. Lebedeva — 2022-12-22

This paper reviews a monograph by the Swedish Germanist Elisabeth Waghall Nivre, “Women and Family Life in Early Modern German Literature”. The monograph is published by Camdan House, edited by James Hardin, 2004. ISBN: 1-57113-197-3. My interest in the monograph stems from its unique area of research: the representation of gender roles in sixteenth-century German-language fiction. Despite the popularity of gender studies and the extensive corpus of works on the history of gender, there are few scholarly works in this particular area. A glance at E. Nivre's monograph allows to argue that although the monograph was published almost twenty years ago, its main observations and conclusions are still relevant today.

Being-in-Danger: Being, Precarity, and Potential – Theoretical Speculations on the Palimpsestic Naked Body

Kwasu D. Tembo — 2022-05-30

This article provides speculative theorization on the relationship between concepts of ‘nakedness’ and the human body. It focuses on the theoretical value of the palimpsest as a symbol through which to parse the various ways that the human body can be marked, inscribed, read and reread. In so doing, this article attempts to speculate on the manner in which being, in relation to onto-existential precarity and danger, is fluid, mutable, alterable, as well as some theoretical consequences thereof. It opens by describing the theoretical significance of the palimpsest before moving on to speculating on its relationship to the onto-existential ‘nudity’ of embodied being. It closes with some further speculations on whether or not the precarity of embodied being subtends forms of being that do not require embodiedness in order to be.

When the Naked Body Speaks: Brazilian Theater in the Search of National Identity

Serguey N. Yakushenkov — 2022-05-30

The naked body is a complex phenomenon, combining a variety of functions. Nudity can be symbols of threat/insecurity, aggression/victim, freedom/slavery. Teatro Oficina, located in the São Paulo suburbs, offers us a unique example of nudity for the construction of national identity. Based on the Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade's "Anthropophagic Manifesto," the theatre founders made nudity and anthropophagy their theatrical credo. Formed in 1958 the theater has taken a leading place in the cultural life of São Paulo and Brazil. Despite censorship during the military dictatorship, Teatro Oficina consistently defended their right for freedom of expression.

Drawing attention to the first descriptions of the Brazilian natives by the Portuguese, de Andrade declared the importance of two main symbols from these characteristics: anthropophagy and nudity. The anthropophagy is understood by Teatro through the idea of the Brazilians capacity to devour the European achievements. Without rejecting the Western theater, the head of Teatro Jose Celso offers the audience the new corporeality concept. In this regard, not only the possible nudity of the actors, but also the willingness for actors and spectators to break the fragile edge of the customary. In theater there is no conventional theatrical stage, no generally accepted dialogues with the audience, which can also become part of the theatrical action, undressed or conversely dressed in theatrical costumes.

The Teatro Oficina’s phenomenon lies in their ability to construct a new corporeality in Brazil, based on the artificial construct by de Andrade and traditions of Brazilian culture: carnivalesque atmosphere, openness, hybridity.

Nudity and Half-Naked Body in the Work of A. S. Pushkin: Options, Values, Principles of Implementation

Elena E. Zavyalova — 2022-05-30

The aim of the article is to determine the functions of the nude and naked body image in the A. Pushkin legacy. The main tasks are to reveal regularities in the choice of motifs, images and perspectives, to correlate them with the author's world viewpoints and the evolution of his views, to connect them with philosophical and aesthetic dominants of his art. The works of art, as well as critical and travel notes, letters, sketches, drawings served as the basis for the study. The biographical and mundane context was involved. Orientation to the consistency and integrity of the analysis determines the novelty of the study. It is noted that the concept of “nudity” acquires the author conceptuality that correlates with form simplicity and naturalness. Pushkin tends to aestheticize the female body. It is proved that the intensity, selectivity, measure of spatial distance in its depiction are determined by a specific life stage, literary type, genre, attitude towards the subject of the image. The assumption is substantiated that the problem of visual perspective is not least related to fashion trends. “Serene” nudity in the works of Alexander Pushkin is usually a sign of foreignness, otherness; attractive is associated with the realm of the infernal, here the poet is influenced by folk mythology and the Gothic. In erotic descriptions the movements, the nervous and mental atmosphere are very important. The variety of the naked body interpretations can be compared with a palimpsest, especially since Pushkin's sketches clearly testify to his refining predilection.

Naked Feminine Physicality as an Invented Tradition in South Asian Popular Culture

Maksym W. Kyrchanoff — 2022-05-30

The author analyses the problems of changes in the representation of the body and the metamorphosis of corporality in South Asia in colonial and postcolonial contexts. Methodologically, the author uses the ideas proposed in interdisciplinary studies of nationalism, combining them with the achievements of the visual turn. It is assumed that, on the one hand, the cultures of the region were able to form their own unique traditions of perceiving naked feminine corporality. On the other hand, the article shows how British colonialism changed these ideas, promoting a moderate Westernisation of cultural spaces, including the idea of naked feminine corporality. The author analyses the role of Hinduism as one of the factors that significantly influenced the development of ideas about corporality. The author analyses the problems of mass culture as the main space for the disclosure of images of the body and physicality in the modern consumer society. The article analyses the role of “high” and “low” culture in the development of collective ideas about the body. The author analyses how the perception of nudity changed under the conditions of post-colonialism in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is assumed that the Indian model of the imagination of corporality and its perception in the discourses of mass culture claims the status of a universal paradigm that significantly affects the perception of corporality in the cultures of neighbouring states. The author analyses how intellectuals used forms of physicality in their attempts to visualise ethnic and cultural identities, emphasising and actualising, on the one hand, the differences of their own ethnicities from the identities of neighbouring nations. On the other hand, the author believes this trend is archaic, transitional and temporary, since the modern mass cultures of South Asia tend to assimilate local cultural and ethnic traditions. Therefore, the article shows that traditional ethnicity in visualisation of body turned into one more strategy used for attracting attention. The author analyses some cultural phenomena as invented traditions of mass culture. Therefore, spaces and forms of visualisation and actualisation of naked feminine corporality, including films, posters, comics, beauty contests are perceived as a visual type of invented traditions that legitimise the identity of the consumer society and mass culture.

Terrifying Nudity: the Naked Truth of Horror Film

Olesya S. Yakushenkova — 2022-05-30

Attitudes towards the naked body vary from culture to culture. Even within one culture, the nakedness often symbolises very different and sometimes arbitrarily contradictory things. It can be associated with eroticism, sanctity, aggression, a certain type of culture (from savagery to elitism), etc. Focusing on specific cinematic examples, the author examines the symbolism of naked male and female bodies in horror films. The author concludes that while nudity may serve to attract viewers to the cinema, it does not necessarily equate to sexuality. The nudity is frightening in its vulnerability, but it also shows how little we know about our own bodies. In cinema, the naked body is often tortured, objectified, manipulated or even sacrificed to maintain social order or nature's fertility. Female nudity in films is linked to fears of female sexuality and fertility. Often, the encounter with the naked female body turns out to be fatal for male characters, leading to their corporal transformation or loss of identity. In any case, the naked body is something out of the norm, it is marginal and destabilizing and so it scares us.

Symbolism and Functions of Nakedness in Medieval Germany. Review of the Collective Monograph “‘And They Realized that They were Naked’. Nudity in the Middle Ages”

Elina A. Sarakaeva — 2022-05-30

This article reviews the German-language collection of scholarly works “ ‘And they realized that they were naked.’ Nudity in the Middle Ages” edited in Bamberg University following the conference for young scholars. The monograph comprises results of an interdisciplinary conference of the Centre for Medieval Studies held in Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg, Germany. The conference was organised by Alexandru Anca, Stefan Bießenecker, Laura Brander, Heiko Hiltmann and Kai Lorenz. ISBN 978-3-923507-29-0, © University of Bamberg Press Bamberg 2008, 460 pages. With introduction by Stefan Bießenecker. Original title: „Und sie erkannten, dass sie nackt waren.“ Nacktheit im Mittelalter“.

Review of the Book “Veils, Nudity and Tattooes: The New Feminine Asthetics”

Irena V. Lebedeva — 2022-05-30

This article reviews a book by a German philosopher of culture Thorsten Botz-Bornstein “Veils, nudity, and tattoos: the new feminine aesthetic” published in London, Lexington Books, 2015, 189 pp., (hardback), ISBN: 978-1-4985-0046-3

The Zombie as a Mirror of Modern Mass Culture

Serguey N. Yakushenkov — 2021-12-27

Zombies were and still are one of the most important symbols of modern mass culture. The zombie discourse originated among African slaves brought to the sugar plantations in the Caribbean. In many ways, the narratives of the “living dead” were a reaction to the crisis phenomena of plantation life. This is evidenced by the rich comparative material presented on many peoples of the world. Such notions of invulnerability after formal death proved to be an important tool of resistance to new conditions caused by external threats. Termed “revitalization,” they were an important element of the Millennialist movements. While initially the sorcerers who could bring themselves back to life were central to these beliefs, in the following period the focus shifted to the victims of various manipulations, transformed into soulless beings. Leaving the environment of their original “habitat,” zombies took on a new life, occupying a firm place in modern mass culture. Having become a symbol of ruthless exploitation of man, relegated to the level of a machine appendage, zombies proved to be one of the most “productive” symbols. They reflected the main trends in the development of society and even began to function as instruments of philosophical reflection. All this allows us to consider zombies as an indicator of altered society, producing new “walking dead”. The metaphors associated with zombies allows us to conclude that the comprehension of zombies makes modern man begin to perceive them constructively, creating a new image, demonstrating the movement towards humanization.

The New Zombie Apocalypse and Social Crisis in South Korean Cinema (translation into Russian)

Sung-Ae Lee — 2021-12-27

The popular culture version of the zombie, developed over the latter half of the twentieth century, made only sporadic appearances in South Korean film, which may in part be attributed to the restrictions on the distribution of American and Japanese films before 1988. Thus the first zombie film Monstrous Corpse (Goeshi 1980, directed by Gang Beom-Gu), was a loose remake of the Spanish-Italian Non si deve profanare il sonno dei morti (1974). Monstrous Corpse was largely forgotten until given a screening by KBS in 2011. Zombies don’t appear again for a quarter of a century. This article examines four zombie films released between 2012 and 2018: “Ambulance”, the fourth film in Horror Stories (2012), a popular horror portmanteau film; Train to Busan (2016) (directed by Yeon Sang-Ho), the first South Korean blockbuster film in the “zombie apocalypse” sub-genre; Seoul Station (2016), an animation prequel to Train to Busan (also directed by Yeon Sang-Ho); and Rampant (2018, directed by Kim Seong-Hun ), a costume drama set in Korea’s Joseon era. Based on a cognitive studies approach, this article examines two conceptual metaphors which underlie these films: the very common metaphor, LIFE IS A JOURNEY, and the endemically Korean metaphor THE NATION IS A FAMILY.

The Hopping Dead. Zombies in the Chinese Culture

Asya A. Sarakaeva — 2021-12-27

Apart from that, the article contains a number of analogies and comparisons of the Chinese image of zombies with other nations’ mythological tradition.

Modernity as Crisis: Goeng Si and Vampires in Hong Kong Cinema (translation into Russian)

Dale Hudson — 2021-12-27

This article is a translation of a chapter from the collective monograph Draculas, vampires, and other undead forms: essays on gender, race, and culture, edited by John Edgar Browning and Caroline Joan (Kay) Picart (2009, Scarecrow Press). The author analyzes the question of how Hong Kong cinema responds to the complex situation of Hong Kong's transition from its status as a British territory on loan to a special territory with extended autonomy within the PRC. As a marker pointing to the crisis development of this process, the Chinese people's particular ideas about the so-called “goeng si” (“jumping corpses”) were chosen. These revived corpses move in a peculiar jumping way, due to which they received this name. According to the author, in the images of these creatures, as well as in the cinematic vampires that have become an integral part of films made by Hong Kong studios, all the contradictions of the cultural and political situation in Hong Kong are manifested as in a mirror. Despite the fact that Hong Kong was able to actively oppose the global cinema represented by Hollywood, it had to adjust to the global cinematic trends in which vampires played an important role. All of this led to a certain hybridity of images that combined both Western and Chinese traits.

Zombies in the German-Speaking Space. Review of the Collective Monograph “The Undead – Zombie Film Theory” Edited by M. Fürst, F. Krautkrämer and S. Wiemer

Elina A. Sarakaeva — 2021-12-27

This article reviews a collection of scholarly works edited by Michael Fürst, Florian Krautkrämer, and Serjoscha Wiemer “The Undead - Zombie Film Theory” (original title “Untot – Zombie Film Theorie”), Munich, Belleville Publishers, 2010, 301 pages, ISBN 978-3-933510-55-6. The reviewer lists the main ideas discussed by the researchers who have contributed to the monograph, briefly summarizes the content and evaluates the scientific significance of the analyzed edition. Three representative essays of the monograph (by W. Fuhrmann, A. Grilli and M. Benecke) receive a closer inspection, as they demonstrate the scope of ideas and methodological approach characteristic of the volume.

Embodying Charismatic Affect(If): the Example of Bruce Lee (Translation into Russian)

David Hugh Kendall Brown — 2021-11-09

While the concept of charisma is widely used in the social sciences, its embodied nature is less thoroughly explored and theorised. This paper revisits the key embodied characteristics of Weber's sociology of charisma and re-interprets these using Shilling's (2005, 2013) umbrella notions of the body as a source and location of and means for society as a way of analysing the idea of the charismatic body as a force for social change. It then draws on a range of embodied concepts to illuminate how charisma is significant channel of infra and inter-corporeal affective interaction between “leaders” and their followers. In particular, Freund's (2009) social synaesthesia and bio-agency, Massumi's (2002) perspective of affect and the moving body, Thrift's (2010) charismatic celebrity, allure and glamour, Mellor and Shilling's (1997) sensual solidarities, and Seyfert's (2012) conception of affectif. To develop and illustrate this perspective of the charismatically affective body in action, the life of film star and martial artist Bruce Lee (1940–1973) is utilised.

Uncles’ Generation: Adult Male Fans and Alternative Masculinities in South Korean Popular Music (Translation into Russian)

Jarryn Ha — 2021-11-09

This article discusses the recent emergence of adult male fans of Korean pop (K-pop) music who openly engage themselves in fan activities typically associated with teenagers (particularly teenage girls) and the significance of their adoration of young female celebrities. The recent appearance of the ‘samchon/uncle fans’ in the K-pop culture discourse marks the first instance since the early 1990s, when teenagers became the primary target audience of South Korea’s entertainment industry, in which male adults reclaimed a significant position as a demographic group of fans. The samchon fans differ from the traditional ajossi (middle-aged, patriarchal men) listeners of adult contemporary music in the kinds of singers and musical genres to which they listen, as well as in their self-identification as fans, participation in fan activities and mass media portrayals. I investigate the implications of the men’s consumption pattern and their representation in South Korean mass media within the contexts of the history of the construction of hegemonic masculinity in South Korea and of recent developments in East Asian popular culture. I also explore possible ways to apply, complicate and question existing theoretical and conceptual frameworks to explain the phenomenon and argue for the possibility of politically potent, alternative masculinities constructed and manifested through the men’s conspicuous consumption of cultural commodities.

Femine Body in the Mass Culture of Iran: between Nudity and Marginalization

Maksym W. Kyrchanoff — 2021-11-09

The author analyses the problems of visualisation and marginalisation of female corporeality in developments of Iranian political and cultural identity from the early modernisation project of the 19^th century and the radical modernisation of the 1920s – 1970s to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which changed significantly the vectors and trajectories of the visualisation of the female body in public spaces and the discourse of Iranian culture. The author believes that Iran / Persia in the 19^th century belonged to the number of Muslim countries that were under stable European influences. Russia and Great Britain became the main sources of cultural changes. Cultural exchange with these countries stimulated changes in Persian identity. The author analyses the features of corporeality in the visual art of Iran from the Qajars to the Islamic revolution and its mutations during the process of radical Islamisation of the social life inspired by it. The author believes that the early modern project of the Qajars was the first attempt to visualise female corporeality and map in the centre of cultural coordinates which in fact simulated European discourse. The identity project of the Pahlavi period became an attempt to transform and adopt Western concepts to the Iranian national canon. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 marginalised the visual and visible forms of female corporeality, presented earlier in public and cultural spaces. The project of Islamisation inspired subordination of the female body, marginalising attempts to visualise in ways Western intellectuals did it. Modern feminine corporeality in Iranian culture develops as a dichotomy of official religious identity and its secular alternative, represented by the “high” cultural segments of the consumer society. The author analyses how and why Western strategies of visualisation of female corporeality coexist with its religious rejection. It is assumed that the Iranian mass culture assimilated Western practices of visualising femininity, although the official cultural discourse continues to reproduce the canon of the body imagined as predominantly religious construct.

Dark Corporeality: Blood, Vampires and Erotics in the British TV Series “Dracula” 2020. Part 1.

Elina A. Sarakaeva — 2021-11-09

The article analyzes the plot tropes of the British mini-series “Dracula”, produced by screenwriters S. Moffat and M. Gatiss, creators of the even more popular TV series “Sherlock”. The new “Dracula”, a mixture of black comedy and body horror, was produced by the BBC and shown on the streaming platform NETFLIX in 2020. The mini-series received the most controversial appraisals from viewers and art critics: from very enthusiastic to sharply negative. The author of this article examines the plot of the series “Dracula” and offers her own version of decoding its meanings. The article sequentially examines the artistic techniques used by famous British screenwriters to create visual and emotional effects, such as black humor, hypertext, queerbaiting, sexual seduction, the “defeated expectancy” trop etc.

«Huge, Disgusting, Corpulent, A-Hundred-Throats»: a Philosophical Study of the Fence and Other Monsters (Review of the book Savchuk V.V. Fence as a Balance of Forces. St. Petersburg: Publishing house Academy of Culture Research, 2021. – 249 p.).

Konstantin A. Ocheretyany — 2021-11-09

The text is a contemplation review of the new book by V.V. Savchuk. Fence as a balance of power. (St. Petersburg: Publishing House “Academy of Culture Research”, 2021. - 249 p.). The book raises a wide range of problems: the world as an extension of the skin, cultural rhythms of the collective body, principles of building trust and openness, mechanisms of psychological isolation and social distancing, current forms of environmental reflection and art practice. The fence turns out to be one of those limiting things, after the invention of which it is not clear how to think of culture without it. An excursion into the author's thought is given, the logic of the narrative being built is commented to reflect on the embarrassing omnipresence and inevitability of the fence. How did culture end up crucified on the fence? When is the fence not a source of comfort, but of excess discipline and increasing anxiety? What is intimidation fraught with? All these questions are outlined and deeply investigated by the author, while the task of this text is to maximize attention both to the book and to the problem. In other words, start a productive dialogue about fences - which, paradoxically, has hardly been noticed in humanistic research.

Why Superman Will Not Save the World: Theorizing the Relationship Between Suffering and DC Comics Superman (Translation into Russian)

Kwasu Tembo — 2021-07-16

The hypothesis that there is an inextricable link between comic book superheroes and suffering would, to anyone with a cursory knowledge of superhero characters found in DC, Marvel, Image, Wildstorm and other houses, and their histories, ostensibly seem valid. This validity depends on which character one is applying said hypothesis to; the psychological and physical suffering of a Batman being more acceptable as such than that of a Plastic Man, for example. However, using DC Comics character Superman as a case study, this paper explores the inextricable link between Otherness, power, and suffering within the remit of the character's mythos. In order to do so, this paper refers to psychoanalytic concepts elaborated by Sigmund Freud in his text Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1922) as a way of demonstrating that despite the character's conventional appraisal as a positivist humanistic symbol of pure altruism, an insuperable, unimpeachable symbol of selflessness and good morality, there is in fact a fundamental link between Superman's 'tridentity' of selves (Clark Kent/Kal-El/Superman), the character's own suffering, and human suffering on a terrestrial scale, as represented within the numerous realities of the DC Comics Multiverse.

The Obligatory Underwater Level: Posthuman Genealogy of Amphibian Human in Media

Alesha Alesha Serada — 2021-07-16

Will humankind ever be able to live underwater? To answer this question from the perspective of visual media studies, I analyze narrative and expressive means used for positive representation of underwater experiences in several examples of screen media. My examples are principally different by origin and yet united by their highly enjoyable effect of immersion into underwater worlds. My primary focus is on Amphibian Man (1928), a cult early science fiction novel by Alexandr Belyaev adapted for screen in 1962 in the USSR.I also explore its unintentionally close contemporary reproduction in The Shape of Water (2016), which even led to accusations in plagiarism. The third example is a contemporary independent video game ABZU by Giant Squid (2016), which replays the same theme of amphibian human existence in a positive light. These cases present a surprisingly rare view of a safe, friendly and interactive marine world, approached by the protagonist who can breathe underwater. I apply the posthumanist lens to find out that, surprisingly, aquatic cyborgs seem to be underrated by the queer thought (Haraway, 2015, 2016); I conclude that the model of ‘queer ecologies’ may become the needed development.

The Golden Ages of Porn: the 1970s (Translation into Russian)

Shelton Waldrep — 2021-07-16

This essay focuses on the brief moment in early seventies filmmaking when the porn industry made narrative-based films such as Deep Throat (1972) and Behind the Green Door (1972). This attempt to fuse porn with mainstream culture has come back into vogue in the present, when we see a new legitimization of porn. One might say that recent representations of sex on the screen have attempted to go back to the early seventies to restart a trajectory that was never able to complete itself. The essay begins with a consideration of the origins of porn films in nineteenth-century European art before moving on to the discussion of the seventies porn films and the complex way in which European art cinema influenced mainstream porn. Related to this topic are how cultural differences within countries influence the approach to sex that is expressed on the screen. In the US, the seventies full-length porn films legitimized certain sexual acts for their audiences and centered some of the pleasure on the screen on female desire as a way to expand the audience for porn. The essay concludes with a coda on the gay male cinematic equivalents of straight seventies porn films.

The Hand of Law and the Body of Family. Family, Fear and the Court of Law in Qing China

Asia Alyevna Sarakaeva — 2021-07-16

The article, through the lens of crimes and court cases, explores the complex relationship between the individual, family and state in China in the XVII-XIX centuries. The research is based on archival court cases and fiction literature of traditional China. The author examines crimes committed within the family, analyses the testimony of criminals and witnesses, as well as sentences and government decrees; compares the real transcripts of court hearings with the depiction of family conflicts, investigations and trials in adventure novels and short stories by Chinese writers. As a result, the author comes to a number of conclusions, in particular, that the Qing government gradually shifted the emphasis from the value of filial piety and generational hierarchy to the special importance of marriage relations; while in public mindset, on the contrary, the inertia of Confucianism and the desire to protect the integrity and autonomy of the family body from interference by state power were extremely strong. Speaking about the reaction of the Chinese family to the crime that occurred within its ranks, the author identifies several typical ways of responding, with the choice of method being often determined by the gender of the conflicting parties.

New Books in English on Chinese Corporeality

Serguey N. Yakushenkov — 2021-07-16

The modern development of China is of great interest to researchers from all over the world. Every year a great number of different monographs on different aspects of this country's history, economy, politics and culture appear. In this analysis of contemporary literature in English we decided to choose several monographs devoted to the issues of corporeality in China. The 20th century proved to be, in a great extent, a decisive period for the development of China. During this period many events took place, but most importantly, China was transformed into something new, becoming a highly developed modern power. These changes also affected the issues of corporeality. A significant role in this was played not only by radical changes in Chinese society, but also by contacts with Western culture and, above all, medicine. In this connection we offer our readers several publications that can be conventionally united by one problem: the transformation of the fundamentals of life. The first monograph by the American anthropologist E. Zhang analyzes the transformation of Chinese attitudes toward male health. Both the Maoist and post-Maoist periods are taken into account. But most importantly, Zhang shows how the changing economic and political model of society is also reflected in Chinese men's attitudes to their health, personal desires and needs.

Another monograph discussed in this review is that of American researcher T. Nakajima, devoted to the creation of a modern system of sanitation and hygiene in Shanghai during the Republican period. In this monograph the author shows how the Chinese approach to the public health system was transformed under the influence of external and internal conditions.

Corporeality in Rustaveli Land: Georgian Body Misadventures and Travels Between Romantic Kartvelian Nationalism and Consumerism of Mass Culture

Maksym W. Kyrchanoff — 2021-04-05

The author analyzes the problems of changes in the representation of the body and the metamorphosis of corporeality in Georgian identity. Georgian identity is defined as a cultural and intellectual construct inspired and imagined by Georgian intellectuals as part of the processes of social and political modernizations. The main goal of the article is analysis of social mutations and cultural transformations of visualization and actualization of the Georgian national / ethnic body and corporeality in the discourse of nationalism. Methodologically, the author uses the provisions and ideas proposed in interdisciplinary studies of nationalism. The national body is defined and analyzed as one of the invented traditions of Georgian nationalism in the context of modernization and transformation of intellectual discourse from modern culture to mass culture of a consumer society. It is assumed that intellectuals used corporeality to actualize ethnic and cultural Georgian identity, emphasizing its uniqueness. The problems of the combination and coexistence of civil and ethnic nationalism in the visualization of corporeality are also analyzed. The author examines how the Georgian “body” became a political factor, a form of visualization of ethnicity and the principles of political nationalism, including the concepts of citizenship and loyalty, as well as the nation as an imagined political community of citizens with stable ethnic bases.

The Queens’ Quarrel. Highlights on the Depiction of Kriemhild and Brunhild in Arts and Literature

Gunter E. Grimm — 2021-04-05

The main heroines of the German heroic epic "The Song of the Nibelungs" are the Burgundian princess Kriemhild, who became the wife of the protagonist Siegfried, and the Icelandic heroic maiden Brunhild, whose hand Siegfried wins in a fierce battle in order to give Brunhild over to the Burgundian king in exchange for his lover’s hand. Jealousy, a sharp dispute about social status and personal hostility between the two heroines result in a fierce quarrel at the gate of the Worms Cathedral. In this key scene, one heroine blames the other for the alleged premarital loss of virginity and shows her rival a belt as an evidence. The acute, tense conflict of characters and wills, outlined in this scene, has long been of interest to writers and artists. The scene of Queens’ Quarrel has become the subject of numerous works of art. This article examines the peculiarities of female characters’ visualization: how their bodies, clothes, appearance are depicted in works of literature, fine arts and cinema. The article is richly provided with illustrations and figurative examples.

Pictorial Constructions of Meaning – New Game Rules for the Downfall. Notes on the Visual Reception of the Nibelungenlied

Sebastian Karnatz — 2021-04-05

The author analyses the visualization of the characters of the German heroic epic "Song of the Nibelungs". The way the illustrators depict the bodies of the characters, what poses their bodies are given, against what kind of landscape the action is placed, how many agents are there and what exactly they do – all of these can become active semantic factors. The intentional intrusion into the plot by some artists not only provides a new context for perception – in fact it gives a different or additional meaning to the text. Sometimes the semantics of illustrations is in clear contradiction with the events of the plot – the author shows how and why this happens, what meanings are encrypted in the illustrations of the poem, how images influence the recipients’ perception of the text.

Playboy as a ‘Soft Power’: the Impact of Magazine Content on the Westernization of the Developing Countries

Serguey N. Yakushenkov — 2021-04-05

Playboy magazine, from its very beginning, was one of the clearest examples of the cultural changes that took place in the United States in the second half of the 20th century. Analyzing the importance of the Magazine, the author shows how a seemingly trivial idea of a magazine with pictures of naked beauties turned into a very successful commercial and cultural project, which had a huge impact on American society, and on many countries of the world. In fact, Playboy became a “soft power” capable of generating new values and transmitting them not only to American society, but also to the cultural landscape of other countries. As an illustration of this influence, international franchises of Playboy magazine published in other countries were taken. Two versions of the magazine were chosen to illustrate this point: in Brazil and in the Philippines. The analysis of the content of these franchise versions shows that they have surprisingly combined the traditions established by the founder of Playboy, Hugh Hefner, and national stereotypes. At the same time, American patterns prevailed in this symbiosis. This was especially evident in the choice of racial type of models, their skin color, etc. In addition, the magazine also brought new systems of gender relations to these countries. All this was possible because the magazine's editors created a unique product that became one of the indispensable symbols of the 20th century.

Review of the book by Desmond Morris “Postures. Body Language in Art”

Elina A. Sarakaeva — 2021-04-05

This work reviews the latest book by an outstanding British painter and scholar Desmond Morris “Postures. Body Language in Art”. London: Thames & Hudson. Extent:320 pp. Illustrations:300. Publication date: 24 October 2019. ISBN:9780500023556. Hard cover.

Oral History, Remembering Practices and the Problem of “Access” to the Traumatic Experience

Natalia A. Artemenko — 2020-12-25

The method of “oral history” is quite widely used today, despite the fact that it came into being not so long ago. The origins of the method of oral history should be sought for in the studies related to interviewing, and with reference to related disciplines, i.e. sociology, ethnology, political science and, partly, linguistics. Quite soon, the disputes over the relation of oral history and historical memory became common for critical literature. The interview method is a very complex way, which requires quite an effort, as well as the awareness of researcher’s subjectivity of a high degree, therefore, some historians sees oral history as a highly unreliable source. Yet, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the method of oral history is in high demand in cases of no other sources except for the evidence of human memory being left. Oral history enables us to study not so much the facts of the past as the very human consciousness and its alteration, transformation, enables us to pose a question on the memory practices from a new perspective. Memory and remembering practices are closely related to oblivion, which, in its turn, indicates the need to eliminate the information that ravages the human psyche and the structure of public consciousness. Oblivion could be entitled “memory trauma” which should be understood as the events, destructive both to personal and social (including national) identity. Consequently the memory starts to be associated with the concept of trauma. The article delves into the relation between oral history and human memory, the problem of “accessing” the traumatic experience, special aspects of narrative in the traumatic experience.

Schopenhauer and Beckett: Trauma of Modernity and Comedy of Incarnation

Alexey M. Sidorov — 2020-12-25

The culture of modernity grows out of the traumatic experience of “European nihilism” and “the death of God,” i.e. the break with tradition and the collapse of a universal ontological and social order. One of the manifestations of the cultural trauma of modernity was the emergence of subject-object dualism, as a result of which the disembodied human subject was opposed to the impersonal and unconscious material world, which includes his own body. The problem of nihilism as a trauma of the crisis of meanings has been solved, since the era of romanticism, in a series of attempts to overcome the anxiety of the emptiness of the formal autonomy of the subject and to understand the paradoxes of incarnation. The aim of the article is to analyze the problem of corporeality in the context of the new European subject-object dualism in the work of S. Beckett, as well as in the philosophy of A. Schopenhauer, which had a decisive influence on Beckett. As a result of the research, a special way of working out the new European trauma of disembodiment was formulated, which consists not in a conservative striving to restore what has been destroyed and not in a revolutionary overcoming, but in an aporetic, deconstructive experience of undecidability and hesitation on the border of the subject-object split, which allows maintaining the "promise of happiness" and hope for redemption without shying away from the experience of disillusionment inherent in modernity and maintaining a presence of mind in the comedy of incarnation. The philosophical and artistic understanding of the problem of corporeality in the works of Schopenhauer and Beckett is one of the essential answers to the modern crisis of the foundations of life.

The Body in Islamic Discourse in Russia during the Pandemic: Between Religious, Medical, and Political Discourses

Sofya A. Ragozina — 2020-12-25

This work is devoted to the problem of constructing corporality in Islamic discourse in Russia under the conditions of pandemic emergency. Analyzing the fatwas and official statements of Russian Muslim leaders in the period from March to May 2020, we defined their discursive strategy of ‘translation’ the language of bureaucracy and medical terminology into the language of Islam, as well as theological justification of government decisions. We examined several cases that illustrate the interference of political and medical discourse on corporality in religious discourse. These include the politicization of the normative functioning of the body (for example, the re-articulation of the category of islamic purity ‘taharat’ and comparison of hijab with medical mask), the sacralization of quarantine as a special time for spiritual activity, the formatting of the funeral ritual in accordance with medical and administrative regulations and comparing victory in the great patriotic war with the victory over the COVID-19. The regulation of corporality has always taken place in Islamic tradition, but in the context of the pandemic, it has acquired a special formative force that can not only articulate the discourse of Islamic biopolitics as such, but also change the religious practices themselves.

Morphology of Body and Corporality in Porn: Ideologization of Body, or How Bodies Started to Speak in Russian

Maksym W. Kyrchanoff — 2020-12-25

The author analyses the problems of changes in the representation of the body and the metamorphosis of corporeality in porn as a segment of the modern mass culture of the consumer society. The analysis of social mutations and cultural transformations of the body and corporeality in the porn discourse of pop culture is the main goal of the article. Methodologically, the author, on the one hand, uses the provisions of the comparative typological method proposed by Vladimir Propp. On the other hand, the text goes back to the structuralist concepts of Pjotr Bogatyrjov, proposed by him for the folklore comparative studies. Therefore, porn is defined and analysed as a form of folklore of the consumer society and mass culture. The author projects four features of the fairy tale, formulated by Vladimir Propp, into those cultural spaces where porn discourse dominates in the modern consumer society. The author analyses how “dumb” (or “silent”) corporeality in porn culture mutated and became “talking”. The author analyses the problems of combination and coexistence of corporeality and verbality in the modern Russian porn discourse. The author studies how the “body” in the porn segment of mass culture began to speak Russian, analysing why the political “message” of Russian “bodies” mutates inevitably into corporeality, returning to it constantly. The author also analyses the cultural contexts and the backgrounds of the body representativeness in modern Russian porn discourse. The author analyses interdependence of corporeality and political language, which the “body” uses in individual and collective contexts.

When We are Sick, the Nature Gets a Rest

Rastyam T. Aliev — 2020-12-25

The review of the book McCarthy, M., Mynott, J., & Marren P. (2020). The Consolation of Nature. Spring in the Time of Coronavirus. London: Hodder Studio.

Sew Me, Mom, Red Hanfu

Serguey N. Yakushenkov — 2020-12-25

Book review Carrico, K. (2017). The Great Han: Race, Nationalism, and Tradition in China Today. Oakland: University of California Press.

Embodying Charismatic Affect(If): the Example of Bruce Lee

David Hugh Kendall Brown — 2020-10-30

While the concept of charisma is widely used in the social sciences, its embodied nature is less thoroughly explored and theorised. This paper revisits the key embodied characteristics of Weber's sociology of charisma and re-interprets these using Shilling's (2005, 2013) umbrella notions of the body as a source and location of and means for society as a way of analysing the idea of the charismatic body as a force for social change. It then draws on a range of embodied concepts to illuminate how charisma is significant channel of infra and inter-corporeal affective interaction between "leaders" and their followers. In particular, Freund's (2009) social synaesthesia and bio-agency, Massumi's (2002) perspective of affect and the moving body, Thrift's (2010) charismatic celebrity, allure and glamour, Mellor and Shilling's (1997) sensual solidarities, and Seyfert's (2012) conception of affectif. To develop and illustrate this perspective of the charismatically affective body in action, the life of film star and martial artist Bruce Lee (1940–1973) is utilised.

“As far as I'm Concerned, that's America's Ass”: How the Body of a Superhero is Constructed

Rastyam T. Aliev — 2020-10-30

The article describes the problem of constructing a comic superhero's body. The author has suggested that the superheroic character's physicality (in comic books, movies, TV series) is based on the subject's views of otherness (including the ideas about the clothing, food and sexuality). The purpose of this study is to analyze the mechanisms involved in the construction of a superhero image in contemporary mass culture.

In the course of the research, the author comes to the following results: 1) the most important patterns of comic book characters' physicality formation are their clothing and sexuality. Superhero bodies can be classified into three main groups - Theriamorphic, Anthropomorphic and Xenomorphic; 2) Superhero physicality is constructed on the border between a suit and its carrier. The costume itself metaphorically and visually "deprives" its owner of a number of organs (eyes, mouth, nose, etc.); 3) The sexual aspect of superhero physicality is mainly manifested in the different categories of otherness and behavior. Thus, the hypothesis that the body of a comic superhero is formed according to the same laws as the body of the Other is confirmed.

The Hero and his Murderer. To the Iconography of Siegfried and Hagen

Gunter E. Grimm — 2020-10-30

Siegfried and Hagen, the main characters of the German heroic epic "The Song of the Nibelungs", are still recognizable and culturally significant images. There are certain "ideal" conceptions about their physical appearance. These visualizations come from a long tradition of iconographic representation of the main characters of the great epic, formed by various texts and works of fine art. This article examines the main milestones of this iconographic tradition, starting from the period of classicism and romanticism. The author gives a brief history of illustrations of the epic and examines the worlds of Richard Wagner and his tetralogy "The Ring of the Nibelung". The author also analyzes the ideological attitudes behind the image of the bodies of Nibelung heroes in the Empire, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. The article is richly provided with illustrations and figurative examples.

Bride behind the Threshold: “The Lay of the Nibelungs”, Body-Shifters and the Mythology of Exogamic Marriage

Аsia A. Sarakaeva — 2020-10-30

Basing on the German epic poem “The Nibelungenlied” and European folk tales, authors of the article single out the story of a bride left nearby her groom’s house. Characteristic features of this story are explained as originating from a ritual myth which used to codify the rites of the exogamic marriage. The bride in this plot is viewed as a shape-shifter whose bodily transformations reflect her origins from the Underworld and manifest her ability to kill. Changing the bodily form is thus representative of the evil powers and dangerous qualities of a being. The transformations of the bride’s body are only present in the most archaic forms of the plot, where her ability and proneness to kill are manifested straightforwardly – by assuming the image of a murderous animal. It’s possible to neutralize her harmful potency with the help of a wonderful assistant, the dead man who embodies one’s ancestor, or by performing certain ritual actions, creating special conditions under which the bride could change and become one of our own, safe for herself and her host family, rejecting all ties with the dangerous space of the Otherworld.

When a Skull Begins to Speak

Serguey N. Yakushenkov — 2020-10-30

Book review Wagner, K. A. (2018). The Skull of Alum Bheg: The Life and Death of a Rebel of 1857. New York: Oxford University Press.

The Politics of Heroes’ Body: Ethnographying the Training of Foreign Astronauts in Russia

Julie Patarin-Jossec — 2020-07-13

If the literature in the history of the Soviet space program is extremely prolific since the 1960s, including regarding cosmonaut embodiment, a lack remains regarding the contemporary reality of human spaceflight in Russia. As this article discusses, based on interviews and a long-term ethnography of the Russian training of astronauts from Western Europe, North America, and Japan, becoming an astronaut is to develop a legitimate body fitting dominant cultural and gendered models. Three mechanisms serve the manufacture of “heroes” and masculine bodies through the astronaut training: the historical narrative of human spaceflight; the values and virility attributes embed as part of the training; and the instruments used in the daily activity of astronauts (such as spacesuits). This manufacture of a legitimate body, characterized by masculinity and discipline inherited from the past, is a heuristic field for corporality and studies of global politics as it underlines how an interweaving of gender, Soviet heritage, and cultural fantasies frames the bodies of a professional elite.

Agender Aesthetics: Body is not an Image, but a Fluid

Anastasia A. Toropova — 2020-07-13

The article focuses on the analysis of agender aesthetics as a postmodern project to abandon gender identity. The article considers the ideological presumptions of the human body, gender and sex denaturalization project, within the framework of post-structural researches. Axiological grounds of the traditional identity understanding criticism have been identified. Lacan, Kristeva, Baudrillard revealed the mechanism of identity formation as an artificial construct attached to corporeality. Butler proposed a strategy to elude identification, formulated as the concept of performativity. These ideas were reflected in the works of fashion designers who share postmodern values. The article discloses the mechanisms of agender body designing by the fashion house of Gucci. Agender aesthetics is based on the idea of rejecting gender identity and proclaiming the body as the unique unit exhibiting itself in a performative manner. The artistic task of agender aesthetics is to develop the visual plasticity of human body. The main techniques for this task are the following: combining things with ideologically opposite vestimentary codes, removing the elements of clothing with rigid gender connotations from the usual context and fitting them into a new visual series to give them gender neutrality. The article problematizes the aesthetic grounds of the agender style and concludes that postmodern rethinking of human body not as an image, but as a fluid, goes beyond the elitist art practices and becomes relevant to the mass consciousness of Western people.

The Body of Art

Shelton Waldrep — 2020-07-13

As part of a larger study on the mainstreaming of pornography in contemporary film and television, this essay attempts to examine and extend our vocabulary for discussing visual representations of the human body by revisiting Kenneth Clark’s important study The Nude from 1972. Clark’s book provides a history of the male and female nude in two- and three-dimensional art from Ancient Egypt and Greece to the Renaissance and beyond. This essay focuses on places within his analysis that are especially generative for understanding pornography such as the importance of placing the nude form within a narrative (Venus is emerging from her bath, for example) or attempts by artists to suggest movement within static forms. The essay places Clark’s rich typology in conversation with other thinkers, such as Fredric Jameson, Erwin Panofsky, E. H. Gombrich, and Michel Foucault. The piece ends with a discussion of androgyny and hermaphroditism as they relate to the expression of gender in plastic art, especially the notion that all representations of the body necessarily include a gender spectrum within one figure. Artists whose work is looked at in some detail include Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Donatello.

Sons of Lilith: The Portrayal and Characterization of Women in the Apocryphal Comics of Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Grant Morrison

Kwasu Tembo — 2020-07-13

This paper examines the treatment and characterization of women, sex, identity, and gender in the lesser known or studied comics of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison in order to discern what such an analysis tells us about each author's engagement with the issues and debates surrounding these sociopolitical and cultural phenomena. The purpose of this study is to discern how three of the most influential writers of contemporary comics books engage with themes of gender, identity, sexuality, and trauma and, in this way, set precedents that have come to be debated and critiqued in contemporary comics scholarship and fandom. It reveals that all three writers ostensibly engage with progressive imaginings of the self, sexuality, identity, and gender as mercurial, de-centred, and subject to play and change in each of the chosen case study characters. It finds that while ostensibly progressive, all three writers simultaneously recirculate certain conceptualizations of the relationships between identity, trauma, and sexuality by taking the histories in which they emerged as assumed.

Remembering Urban Trauma: St Petersburg and Nijmegen in the Second World War

Niek van Ansem — 2020-07-13

The issue of the memory of collective trauma has rarely been analyzed in cross-cultural research. Urban trauma, in particular, is a relatively unknown concept. Never before has the memory of urban trauma of the cities of St Petersburg and Nijmegen in relation to the Second World War been compared in the academic realm. This article sets out to create a juxtaposition of St Petersburg and Nijmegen in terms of their Second World War traumas and the way these traumas are represented and commemorated in both cities. The authors examine the meaning-making role that experts play within the remembrance culture of St Petersburg and Nijmegen. A thick description of conducted field research and interviews with experts are used in order to thoroughly compare the experts’ approach to the remembrance cultures. This article aims to compare and translate the way in which different types of memory of trauma relate to the same event. It establishes that although there are distinct differences between the two cities, experts deal with researching the commemoration of trauma in a similar manner. This study reveals uneasy questions, blind spots and taboos of commemorating urban trauma in both Russia and the Netherlands.

Extensions as Techno-Somatic Assemblages: Towards a History of the Idea

Sergei V. Sokolovskiy — 2020-04-20

The article deals with the sesquicentennial history of the concept ‘extension’, popularized by, the founder of proxemics Edward Hall. Introduced during the early XX c., the concept gained currency in contemporary anthropological ecology, media theory, and sociology. A number of scholars, including the founder of the philosophy of technology Ernst Kapp and that of psychoanalysis – Sigmund Freud, had contributed to the theory of extensions further developed by a visionary engineer Richard Buckminster Fuller and Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan. The author discusses the place of extensions among other types of techno-somatic assemblages and suggests a typology of extensions according to their topological location, relative size, and the human faculty or function that a particular extension magnifies or supersedes. The history of the concept enables one to assert that human cultural artifacts could be viewed as a certain organ’s or somatic function’s dilation or amplification and that one’s body and mind occur in stable relations with technical artifacts (various tools, appliances, machines, infrastructures) well before birth as parts of techno-somatic assemblages. Extension as a special type of hybrid techno-somatic entities, as a chimeric concept, uniting somatic (natural) and human-made (artificial, cultural, technical) elements, becomes the encompassing notion for culture and technology in their entirety, a bridge between body and mind, on the one hand, and technical milieu, on the other. The author assesses the implications of such a view for body, memory, and death studies.

Body Identity in the Individual Self-Consciousness System

Iosif M. Dzialoshinskii — 2020-04-20

The article discusses the problem of transformation of personal identity under the influence of modern media. The relevance of this problem is due to the discrepancy between existing theories of identity, according to which identity is considered as a stable idea of self-identity, and the real practice of our contemporaries, the peculiarity of which is the desire for a demonstrative transformation of both appearance and identity.

The aim of the study is to determine the place of bodily identity in the system of personal identity and the trends of transformation of bodily self-image.

An analysis of the processes of transformation of bodily self-images among our contemporaries has allowed us to prove that the main driver of these processes is the media.

The study allows us to formulate the conclusion that bodily identity is a complex of signs that are filters of perception of reality, and markers that determine the attitude to phenomena of reality. In other terms: identity is a discourse that defines personal, group, and mega-group communication. In past centuries, the main actors who participated in the formation of the identity of a developing personality - in addition to personal experience - were a family, church, street, school, which offered homogeneous bodily images. Today, modern media demonstrate many conflicting options for bodily identity, forcing the individual constantly to adapt to new requirements.

This article is intended for researchers of modern media.

Motor Inversions as a Resource for Individualizing Human Activity

Dmitry A. Sevostyanov — 2020-04-20

In this article, we have considered the factors that determine the individuality of human activity. We have shown that the traditional model of human activity does not take into account all such factors. The purpose of the study is to analyze insufficiently studied individualizing factors in the system of human activity. The most important resource that creates motor individuality is inversions in the hierarchical system of human activity. We conducted a study based on the concept of levels of motor construction by N. A. Bernstein. Inversions are a form of relationship between hierarchically subordinate levels of human activity, in which the lower level acquires dominant features, formally remaining in its former subordinate position. In this article, we have shown a number of examples of motor inversions. Separately, we have identified symptomatic inversions, in which the properties of the higher motor level are manifested in the lower motor level, and real inversions, which become a manifestation of actual systemic contradictions in human motor skills. These results show the need to study system inversions in the structure of human activity, and at the same time demonstrate the importance of studying inversions as a General form of relations in complex hierarchical systems. Ignoring inversions does not allow us to form an adequate model of human activity. The article is intended for all readers interested in philosophical problems of corporeality.

"Sin of Onan": The Evolution of the Views on Masturbation in Modern Time

Andrei B. Sokolov — 2020-04-20

History of sexuality is one of the most dynamically developing trends in contemporary historiography. Cultural history of masturbation reflects evolution of ideas about this part of human sexuality. This article uses constructivist methodology and regards masturbation as cultural construct originated from mental dominants of time and society. In conditions of “medicalization” of modern society (the expression of M. Foucault) the masturbation was looked upon as a pathology and a dangerous social vice. The author of the article employs a chronological approach examining the evolution of attitudes to masturbation. In the time of Renaissance and in the XVII century masturbation wasn’t considered a great sin, though many authors condemned it. In the XVIII century, the period of relative tolerance was over - masturbation became to be regarded as a disease that needed treatment, even surgical interference in some cases, as object of “new psychiatry”. It was at the same time exposed to moral condemnation and was put under strict pedagogical control. The expressed repressiveness continued for many decades, and only on the turn of XIX century cautious doubts in attribution of masturbation to diseases appeared. “Rehabilitation” of masturbation happened only in the middle of the XX century under influence of social factors and formation of consuming society, as well as the new ideas in sexology. The attitude to masturbation, as to other sexual practices depends on raising and decreasing of the level of tolerance in society.

The Song of Nibelungen Bodies and How They are Described, Idealised and Eroticized. Part I. Der Helt Was Wol Gewahsen...

Elina A. Sarakaeva — 2020-04-20

The discovery of the medieval heroic epic “Das Nibelungenlied”in the XIX century Germany coincided with the search for new national mythology and symbols within the movement of Romantic medievalism. The heroic epic got a country-wide recognition asa great literary work that was supposed to serve as a source of German values and to reflect the German national character. With this approach the characters of the epic were re-constructed as embodiments of these German values, as ideals to follow. The article analyses the iconography of these characters, the “nibelungs”: the way they were visualized and depicted in fine arts and fiction and what ideological concepts were ascribed to their bodies and appearances. The first part of the article compares the descriptions of Nibelungen characters in the works of German authors of XIX-XXI centuries and compares them to the descriptions in the original text of the poem to see how cultural codes are constructed and interpreted through visualization of human bodies.

Gunther’s Head and Hagen’s Heart. Royal Sacrifice in the Lay of Nibelungs

Asya A. Sarakaeva — 2020-04-20

The article deals with the final part of the German epic Nibelungenlied to learn the real significance, cultural and ideological context of these episodes. The author analyzes literary and anthropological theories, as well as archaeological finds to conclude that royal deaths described in the epic reflect the ancient practice of human sacrifice.

Re-Viewing Homo Sovieticus: the Representation of the Male Body in the Films of Kira Muratova

Graham Roberts — 2020-04-20

One of the paradoxes of mainstream Soviet cinema was that it tended to ‘make a spectacle’ of masculine physicality without (for the most part) drawing attention to it in any explicit sense. The male hero’s body was mythologized in patriarchal structures that imposed themselves as neutral. This paper examines the different ways in which the director Kira Muratova challenges this cultural paradigm, by explicitly foregrounding the male body, and destabilizing the male perspective. In this respect Muratova’s films pose a challenge to the archetypal images of masculinity (and femininity) prevalent not just in the Soviet Union, or in mainstream cinema, but in many other places besides.

The Enigma of Gülchatai’s Face or The Face of the Other

Serguey N. Yakushenkov — 2020-04-20

The article analyzes the problem of interpretation of the image of the Other through their Body. In modern society, the problem of denoting the Other is extremely important. Very often mass media resorts to the metonymy of the body for naming the Other, for example, "the face of Caucasian nationality". This usage of the word ‘face’ as a certain metaphor to describe the nationality depersonalize people. The usage of the metonymic method of pars pro toto indicates archaic nature of the notions related to the corporality of the Other. As an argument, the author quotes numerous examples of images of mythological heroes whose otherness is expressed through hypertrophied bodily parts, for instance a large face or a tremendous head. The article analyses the popular Soviet movie "The White Sun of the Desert", because this movie demonstrates in the best way the Soviet and post-Soviet pattern of Cultural Encounter. The astonishing popularity of the movie in the USSR shows that the representation of a face-to-face meeting with the Other that the movie offered was very close to the Soviet viewer. The author argues that Russian society still faces the challenge of rediscovering the dialogue of cultures instead of a monologue.