Holiday semantics of transitive society

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Holiday semantics of transitive society

М. Abysova

National Aviation University.

Abstract. The article analyzes the structural organization of the holiday in the interaction of its invariant-ideal, spatio-temporal and symbolic-communicative levels. The sensually perceived and empirically knowable space of the holiday, within which a person transforms the semiotic status of familiar objects and actions, is a ritual. The essential feature which differs the ritual from other semiotic systems is that the words, movements and gestures as components of the ritual action have existential rather than conceptual meaning. One of the tendencies of the modern society is the erosion of the spatio-temporal boundaries of the holiday, the loss of its semantic content, the transformation from a unique to a habitual event, not referring to integrative values but continuing without foundation.

Key words: transitive society, holiday, ritual, existential, semantics.

СЕМАНТИКА ПРАЗДНИКА В УСЛОВИЯХ ТРАНЗИТИВНОГО ОБЩЕСТВА. М. А. Aбисова

В статье проанализирована структурная организация праздника во взаимодействии ее инвариантно-идеальных, пространственно-темпоральных и символико-коммуникативных уровней. Чувственно воспринимаемое и эмпирически познаваемое пространство праздника, в котором человек трансформирует семиотический статус привычных предметов и действий, является ритуал. Ритуал отличается от других семиотических систем тем, что составляющие ритуальное действие слова, движения и жесты несут не понятийную, а экзистенциальную нагрузку. Одной из тенденций современного общества является размывание пространственно-временных границ праздника, утрата его смыслового наполнения, превращение его из уникального в единичное событие, отсылающего к другим развлекательным формам, а не интегративным ценностям.

Ключевые слова: транзитивное общество, праздник, ритуал, экзистенциал, семантика.

СЕМАНТИКА СВЯТА В УМОВАХ ТРАНЗИТИВНОГО СУСПІЛЬСТВА. М.А. Aбисова

Вступ. Осмислення символічного потенціалу свят, з одного боку, буде корисним у фіксуванні особливостей конструювання національної ідентичності, легітимації політичного режиму, розумінні політичних, соціокультурних та економічних змін у суспільстві. З іншого боку, це допоможе визначити, які політичні сили беруть участь у конкуренції за інтерпретацію соціокультурної реальності, які альтернативні символи і смисли використовуються у полі символічного виробництва. Мета і завдання. Мета дослідження визначається потребою у вивченні свята не лише як традиції та культурної пам'яті, але як інструменту символічної політики. Серед завдань можна назвати такі: 1) визначити провідні функції свята у суспільному житті; 2) виявити своєрідність семіосфери свята по відношенню до інших знакових систем культури; 3) охарактеризувати основні тенденції зміни семантики святкової культури транзитивного суспільства. Методологія дослідження: Базою для проведення данногодослідження стала наукова спадщина М. Бахтіна, А. Гуревича, Д. Лихачова, Ю. Лотмана, Й. Хейзінги, які вивчали різноманітні методологічні аспекти теорії свята. У роботі використані наступні методи, зумовлені специфікою обраної проблеми: структурно-функціональний метод, на базі якого визначається суттєвий зміст свята, його складові компоненти, механізми функціонування; порівняльно-історичний метод, що дозволяє уявити свято в конкретних історичних формах; інтегративний метод, що дозволяє застосувати знання, отримані різними науками до завдань, поставлених в цьому дослідженні. Результати дослідження. Розгляд свята в протиставленні повсякденності дозволяє визначити властиве йому специфічне сприйняття навколишнього світу та віднесення до сфери сакрального. Простором свята є ритуал, для адекватного вивчення якого погляд стороннього спостерігача, що дозволяє досліджувати його структуру, визначити функціональне призначення його елементів має бути доповненням поглядом «зсередини». Це дає можливість аналізу емоційного стану учасників, занурення в ритуал, можливість відчуття зв'язку із екзистенціальної цінністю, що лежить в його основі. Положення свята у транзитивному суспільстві є неоднозначним: відбувається тотальна буттєва експансія атрибутивних властивостей свята у світ повсякденності, в результаті чого свято як форма емоційно-символічної діяльності втрачає специфіку своєї самодостатності у культурі. Обговорення: свято є подвійним за своєю природою і внутрішньо суперечливим. Будучи одним із чинників рівноваги соціального життя, свято при цьому грає в реальній історії і прямо протилежну роль, реалізуючи свою власну ідею вічного оновлення життя і вносячи в той чи інший суспільний лад деструктивні сили. Висновки. Однією з особливостей розвитку сучасного суспільства є тенденція до ослаблення смислового навантаження свята внаслідок розмивання меж між святковістю і буденністю, взаємопроникнення святкового у повсякденне і навпаки. Свято нерідко зводиться до його декоративних, розважальних форм, втрачає зв'язок із закладеним у нього від початку смислом, що веде до заміни свята довільно встановленими урочистостями. Святковий текст складається із нашарувань різних семіотичних систем: карнавальної культури, елементів християнських, дохристиянських язичницьких свят, радянських звичаїв і обрядів, незнайомих звичаїв і традицій, принципово нових форм (кінофестивалі, презентації, шоу і т.п.). Провідний сміховий початок є головною ознакою карнавалу як різновиду свята. Численні прояви карнавалізації у сучасній культурі повною мірою відображають нестійкість (перехідність, кризу) сучасного стану культури.

Ключові слова: транзитивне суспільство, свято, ритуал, екзистенціал, семантика.

Introduction

The construction and maintenance of a collective identity, the legitimization of the existing order, and planning for the future are the functions of the holiday as an instrument of the state symbolic policy. The holiday is responsible either for the establishment of a new celebration practice, or the restoration of a previously established one. Thus, recovery or the loss of the interest in a holiday indicates definitely a change in society's value priorities. The symbolic potential of the holidays is used within the practices provided by the government and other political actors for their own purposes.

The aim is to analyze the semantics of the holiday as an instrument of symbolic politics in the context of sociocultural transformations.

The tasks are:

- to determine the leading functions of the holiday in public life;

- to reveal the uniqueness of the semiosphere of the holiday in the context of transitive sociocultural systems;

- to characterize the main trends in changing the semantics of the holiday culture in a transitive society.

Research methods

The holiday problem is studied in the following aspects: “holiday and culture” (M. Bakhtin, A. Gurevich, V. Ivanov); “holiday and game” (J. Huizinga); “holiday and laugh culture” (M. Bakhtin, D. Likhachev, Yu. Lotman, A. Panchenko, V. Propp, B. Uspensky). The holiday as a social phenomenon was studied in the works of Y. Belousov, K. Zhigulsky, A. Rudnev, Ugrinovich, and others). Despite the multiple concepts of the holiday represented (mythological, labor, holiday-centered world understanding, social life ranking, emotional charge, relaxation, morphological, game integration, etc.), the theory of the holiday is most fully represented in M. Bakhtin's concept. The latter represents the holiday as the final, result form of labor, which sums up the working cycle, prepares the participants of the holiday for a new phase of the working life. At the same time, the national ideal of life the holiday originally associated with is positioned in it. The holiday, in this case, is not just an artistic reproduction or reflection of life, but life itself, framed in a playful way and rooted in human culture. This explains the very meaning of the holiday as the foundation and form of culture. Most fully, it manifests itself as a philosophical and cultural category, a cultural universe, acting at the social, theoretical, and technological levels.

Research results

holiday identity culture symbolic

The holiday as one of the oldest forms of human culture has repeatedly become the object of investigation, however, an integral theoretical study of this phenomenon has not yet been formed. The essence of the holiday as a cultural phenomenon is revealed differently by various researchers, and in the course of their studies many definitions of the holiday were developed. Among the most famous concepts used to analyze the holiday in folklore and cultural studies, there are: the solar concept, the authors of which etymologized the holidays in accordance with their views on nature (A. Afanasyev, A. Potebnya, and others); morphological, indicating mythology to be the basis of the holiday (V. Propp); labor, indicating the connection of the holiday with work (V. Chicherov); a game concept that contrasts the holiday to everyday activities (J. Huizinga) and others. K. Zhigulsky cites the following definition of the holiday from the “Dictionary of the Humanities”: “A holiday is a moment of socio-cultural dynamics when a society in a playful (entertaining) way confirms its social and cultural relations. The holiday is expected to arrange if not a mess, then at least a violation of order on a special mythical plot to obtain or strengthen the approved order in social consciousness. The holiday is valuable insofar as the symbolism and the myth used in this case have value for the group” (Жигульский, 1985: 69). According to K. Zhigulsky, a holiday is one of the social institutions “which protects, promotes and updates the values of the culture around which society organizes its conscious life” (Жигульский, 1985: 73). Thus, the holiday in the sociocultural system performs, at least, two most important, closely interconnected though contradicting functions: ritual-integrative and ritual laughing. At the same time, the ritual-laughing and ritual-participatory functions can be either brought together or divorced within the framework of a particular kind of holiday culture.

The possibilities of social integration provided by holidays as symbolic systems are emphasized by P. Bourdieu. For him, holidays are social practices that make possible a “consensus on the meaning of the social world”, i.e. social integration tool. Holiday practices contain the potential for change, as well as the resources to preserve historical patterns of behavior, traditions, and rules (Бурдье, 2005: 92).

Viewed in this way, it becomes obvious that the reproduction of holidays should not be considered as a simple inert tradition: they have a functional role that allows the community or group to maintain their identity, to be integrated and involved into the common activity. Clarifying the motivates making individuals participate in holiday practices, one should mention, on the one hand, individual personal motivation and the mobilization orientation dictated by power institutes, on the other. The holiday as a special state of the cultural system is characterized by a very definite correlation between the individual and society, the individual and the collective: the social principle in the holiday dominates over the individual one. Many types of human activity can be successfully carried out by single individual, but it isn't relevant to the celebration. As K. Zhigulsky wrote, expressing the general point of view of researchers of this phenomenon, “a holiday and celebrations ... always require the presence, participation of other people, they are a joint action, a common experience” (Жигульский, 1985: 21).

Although the holidays are perceived as a whole, they consist of a number of elements that represent a wide range of symbolic forms, which makes them be convenient tools for symbolic politics. The framework of the symbolic policy of power institutions makes it possible to "decompose" the holiday into separate elements, each of which, despite referring to the past, has the potential for change. At the same time, some holidays successfully transform their content, gradually crowding out ideologically uncomfortable meanings, while others become the subject of fierce debate. This topic was revealed in the book “Invention of Tradition", where the authors believe that the past does not exist separately from its social construction in the present.

Hobsbaum defines invented traditions as “a set of practices of a ritual or symbolic nature that aim at introducing certain values and norms of behavior through repetition, which naturally implies a connection with the past” (Hobsbaum, 2000: 56). The invention of tradition is a process of formalization and ritualization, characterized by appeals to the past. The task of the holiday, as a subspecies of such traditions, is “socialization as imprinting of beliefs, value systems and rules of behavior in the minds” (Hobsbaum, 2000: 56).

Let's define the structural elements of the holiday as a complex symbolic form, to which we attribute: symbolic actions, rituals (the expression of the highest values), ceremonials (a strict program of behavior), ceremonies (the solemn performance of an action) and spectacle (less formalized, often involves the participation of the audience in action). In general, the ritual, ceremonial, ceremony indicate the dynamic component of the holiday. They can be used individually or combined. Thus, we get the opportunity to talk about the semiotic mechanism of intertextual interactions in the holiday space, arranged in different types.

The meaning of the ritual should be found not in it, rather in the society that generates it -- this idea expressed by R. Smith found a strong support by E. Durkheim and was actively developed by him. Man, according to E. Durkheim, is a dual being. He combines two principles: the individual principle, which has its foundation in the body and, therefore, is a narrowly limited area of action, and the social principle, which represents in us (society) the highest reality of the intellectual and moral order that we can know by observation (Durkheim, 2008: 23). Religion for Durkheim is the most striking expression of the social principle in a person, therefore, in his opinion, all religious ideas are based on society. Durkheim shows that in fact it is the society that is the true God for savages, finding His material embodiment in the totem (Durkheim, 2008: 295-296).Uniting with each other in the process of worshiping the totem, performing ritual dances, savages accumulate the energy embodied in the totem, which they then spend in ordinary, “everyday” life, breaking up into small groups and engaged in hunting and gathering. After the memory of the community connecting all of them begins to fade, and the stored energy runs out, the clan gathers together again to restore a time-washed out sense of integrity and gain lost spiritual strength.

We formulate the basic setup, the framework of the Durkheim model. The life of any society takes place in two areas that are in no way connected with each other and have a qualitatively different nature: the area of “sacred” (le sacre) and the area of “secular” (le profane). There is no objective criterion that separates one area from another, however, each culture carrier clearly perceives their qualitative difference and in a particular situation can always say whether this situation refers to the “1e sacre” or to “le profane”. Moreover, he is well aware of the absolute separation and irreducibility of these areas to each other: they belong to two heterogeneous layers of being that have nothing in common with each other. Having made the main distinction, Durkheim easily proceeds to the definition of the ritual. Following R. Smith in his division of religion into beliefs and ritual, he calls the ritual a system of “rules of conduct that prescribe how a person should behave in the presence of sacred objects” (Durkheim, 2008: 56). We note, however, that, thus reducing the problem of ritual to the problem of the sacred, Durkheim did not actually solve it, but reformulated the problem. Firstly, it remained completely incomprehensible how a researcher can distinguish between “1e sacre” and “le profane” in the culture different from his own, if he does not have a direct intuition of both, and there are no objective mechanisms of discrimination. This also raised a second question: does Durkheim have the right to talk about the general character of the opposition, which is obvious only to his culture, and to transfer the ideas of his culture to others.

Durkheim himself, however, provides, albeit implicitly, the answer to the second question. The commonality of the “sacred-secular” opposition for all cultures is connected with the commonality of human nature, with the individual-collective basis of man. In the face of this fundamental opposition, all external cultural differences recede into the background. The sacred, and therefore the ritual, reveals the social principle in man.

Let's discuss the question of the correspondence of Durkheim's model with the semantic field. The true sense of a ritual action can only be understood from inside, only by people who know about the existential they are connected with. A person who looks at the ritual from the outside will see only a meaningless set of actions that have no explanation from the point of view of the empirical practice of this world and therefore will perceive it as a prejudice, as a manifestation of irrational affects of the group. He will be able to describe in detail the external structure of the ritual, maybe understand the mechanism of its generation, but the ontological essence of the ritual will be hidden from him. That is why an external observer is not able to distinguish a ritual from a ceremony, a form filled with life, from an empty form.

Existential arises when a certain community is formed that connects all the members of the group, a community that is clearly felt by each of its members. Existentials set value guidelines and significantly affect human behavior. A ritual action also establishes a “channel of communication” with the existential, and the sensation of this connection gives the ritual procedure special tension and solemnity.

It is also important to note the presence of “feedback” between the existential and the ritual. The ritual not only recalls the “highest values”, it simultaneously “feeds” them with energy; neglect of ritual procedures gradually leads to a loss of connection between the subject and the existential, and if the number of such subjects exceeds the “critical mass”, then to the decay of the existential.

To enter the semiosphere of the holiday, an individual must have a semiotic cultural experience. The real existence of the holiday always involves being in public space. It is the publicity of the main forms of holiday life that makes possible the emotional and semantic unity of the individual and society. Under the conditions of the existence of stable social forms, it can be said that the order of realization of cultural phenomena in space and time occurs according to rigidly formulated norms. Schemes and rules of cultural interpretations for holiday structures are developed by cultural experts. The core of a monostylistic culture is its sacredness, which helps to justify the justice and expediency of any activity. The ritual-laugh and ritual- integrative functions are maximally divorced.

In the course of historical evolution, there is a tendency towards a gradual rapprochement of ritual- integrative and ritual-laughter principles, which reaches its maximum in the holidays of the new and modern times.

A feature of the sociocultural development of the modern world is the rapid variability of public life. A man of the modern world easily passes from one space of culture to another. Moreover, for this it is not at all necessary to leave your place - virtual communities have become as much a part of modern life as real communication. However, the infinite fluidity of social being must be compensated by the stability of its fundamental foundations. One of these foundations is the recognition of one's own cultural identity, belonging to a social community (country, nation, city, family). Modern culture and its most important component - mass media - rather complicates this process than contributes to it. With the collapse of traditional culture, society has lost its historically established sustainable mechanisms for the formation and transition of identity. In a traditional society and even in the life of a person at the beginning of the XX century, his cultural identity was maintained and reproduced primarily in the structures of everyday life, lifestyle and sustainable patterns of behavior. Thanks to mass media, a modern person is constantly in contact with a "foreign" culture, being both in his everyday world and in the world as such. There is a natural process of erosion of not only state borders, but also the borders of national and cultural identity. It is not surprising that in such a situation we observe a decrease in emotional resonance in the days of “traditional" state or confessional holidays. And at the same time, the level of "festivity" of culture as a whole rises, since the microrituals of everyday life take on the function of social integration: from corporate parties to "new traditions".

The mass invention of traditions was the result of "cardinal changes in social groups, conditions and social context, which required new mechanisms for ensuring and expressing social cohesion and identity, as well as structuring social relations” (Hobsbaum, 2000: 263).

The presence of heterogeneous cultural forms, life styles, subcultures, etc. in a single space, on the one hand, marks the ontologically pluralistic intentions inherent in the modern world. What characterizes the type of polystylistic culture? First of all, it is decanonization (lack of a sacred core). Polystylistic culture is also characterized by disorder in culture, expressed in violations of the spatiotemporal order of realization of cultural phenomena. The combination of previously incompatible traditions is clearly manifested.

One can agree that the holiday gradually lost its semantic content, a significant part of the semantic- semiotic aspects, retaining only the outer shell, mutating in accordance with the needs of mass culture. The spatial boundaries of the holiday, as well as the culture as a whole, are becoming more and more blurred: now everyone with the help of television or the Internet can attend holiday events without actually being present. And the erosion of spatio-temporal boundaries is not the only consequence.

The alternative meanings and symbols used by public and political actors represent a bizarre symbiosis consisting of "layers" of various holiday types and genres that are weakly amenable to the logic of the integrity of semiotic holiday systems. The festive element tries to combine little compatible elements: "quotes" from Christian holidays and pre-Christian pagan rites, ideas of ancient festivals and medieval European mysteries, borrowed customs of different countries and holiday fragments of the socialist stage of cultural construction in our country, etc. Thus, the holiday loses its history, becomes a single event, which does not refer to anything and has no continuation, or, conversely, continues without reason, an example of which are numerous television "holidays" (musical, "humorous" concerts, entertaining transmission).

Discussion

One of the features of the development of modern society is the tendency to weaken the semantic load of the holiday. At present, the holiday often comes down to its decorative, entertaining forms, loses its connection with the meaning laid down in it, which leads to the replacement of the holiday with arbitrarily established celebrations. The boundaries between festive and everyday time are more and more blurred, and one of the consequences of this is the universal festivalization of culture, the "hyperfestivity" of the modern world (Мюре, 2001). For example, the French researcher F. Muret, discussing the trends characteristic of modern society, notes that "holding all kinds of holidays... became the labor activity of our era and its main discovery" (Мюре, 2001: 71). F. Muret calls our contemporary culture "hyperfestive" and argues that “a holiday in the hyperfestive world is no longer opposed to everyday life, does not contradict it: now it is everyday life itself” (Мюре, 2001: 72-73). R. Guenon characterizes modern culture as the era of "continuous and sinister carnival" (Генон, 2020). To some extent, the holiday ceases to be a unique event, it is replicated through the organization of all kinds of "festive" events (using technical replication tools, numerous television shows, concerts, festivals, presented in abundance on television). This is largely facilitated by the general processes of informatization, the development of communication systems and media culture.

Conclusion

holiday identity culture symbolic

An appeal to contemporaly reality testifies that being in a modern holiday, firstly, comes down to decorative-entertaining, culturally sterile forms; secondly, it is characterized by a gradual "loosening" of relations with meaning-forming values and the destruction of the existential essence of the holiday; thirdly, it replaces a truly festive event with a pleasure spectacle of a surrogate character. At present, this phenomenon itself is undergoing powerful changes, during which the traditional mass holidays are narrowing in their volume and significance, their place is occupied by multiple narrowly targeted events of a corporate and party nature, which in the process of their conduct lose the integrative and retain only a laugh function.

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