Dismemberment of Kathleen’s Psyche in Joyce Carol Oates’s 'The Rise of Life on Earth'

Postmodern literary texts have been exploring characters that are whimsically strange. The tacit plots in the postmodern textual space enable the writers to construct and manifest the mental space of the characters in the textual world. The Rise of Life on Earth written by Joyce Carol Oates concocts the emotional estrangement of the protagonist, Kathleen Hennessy. Decrypting the text amplifies the unabating efforts of Kathleen to survive in a world that has been portrayed as a larger, repressive and pernicious family. Her masquerade to be a shy, passive and well-behaved girl hides the menacing vengeance that has culminated as a result of abuses and afflictions. Her mental spaces are constructed during the course of narration. This paper purports to scrutinize the fragmented psyche of Kathleen and the conceptual integration of mental space and textual space that replicates both social and individualistic reality and expands the understanding of Oates’ text.

A MODERN CITY. LIVING REALITIES OF HISTORY

The article is devoted to the reality of the modern historical city in the totality of the actual values of the valuable heritage, traces of the past, mental codes, archetypal images and the memory of civilization. The place of history in today’s socio-cultural fi eld and in the professional context is not clearly defi ned. Together with the understanding of the need to preserve the heritage, traces and memory of the past, there are global trends that mediate the features of the glocal in architecture. However, even this compromise cannot fully demonstrate the complexity of the historical city viability. According to the author, it is necessary to search for reasons that sometimes appear outside the material reality, but address directly to the spiritual world and mental space of a person, which is the main purpose of the article. The emphasis is placed on the artistic dimension of environmental realities, which allows us to determine the living connections of history and modernity on the basis of the author’s concept of artc integration. The article is illustrated by some results of cooperation between the Nizhny Novgorod State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering and the Polytechnic University of Milan (Politecnico di Milano) in the fi eld of reconstruction and renovation of historically valuable territories and author’s photographs.

“Ugric text” as a cultural phenomenon: towards articulation of the problem

Leaning on the conceptual analysis, the article describes “Ugric text” as a special cultural phenomenon. Approximately fifty works by Ugric writers (both, poetic and prosaic) were analyzed using the Internet program, “Morpher”. Despite the obvious differences stylistic and thematic differences in their works, both poets and prose writers use a common set of basic concepts that comprise the backbone of cultural space of the region. The conclusion is made on the similarities that unite the texts of Ugric authors into a single cultural phenomenon. The goal of this research lies in the description of Ugric text as a unique cultural phenomenon. The article employs the results of the latest scientific developments in the field of philological regionalism and geopoetics, as well as literary works by the Ugric authors. The main result consists in elucidation of the concept of “Ugric text”, its differentiation with the concept of “literary school”. Having studied the texts of prominent Ugric writers – E. D. Aypin, S. S. Kozlov, O. B. Richter, P. A. Sukhanov, N. V. Sochikhin, Y. Shestalov and others –  the author concludes on the basic concepts that determine the common mental space of Ugra and ensure the semantic integrity of Ugric text as a cultural phenomenon. It is established that due to the common conceptual framework, Ugric text not only exists as a unified whole, but also evolves, remains contemporary, and meets the spiritual needs of the audience. Comprehensive analysis of the literary works indicates that the common concepts in the poetic and prosaic Ugric text evolve and refract within the framework of the authorial linguistic worldview. The scientific novelty consist sin the fact that this article is first to analyze Ugric texts as a cultural phenomenon from the perspective of conceptual approach.

About the nature of the supra-personal reality of spiritual culture

The article shows that the suprapersonal reality of spiritual culture is an autonomous complex, purposeful reflection, a self-contained cultural process, which in the process of its development over two and a half thousand years has acquired the most developed structure and form. Hegel and Hartmann sufficiently revealed its peculiar nature, complex structure, and cultural-historical significance. Their conceptual constructions can serve as a methodological basis for general cultural studies.The thematic culturological approach allows us to analize the genesis of world culture and individual cultures of different peoples. Thematic analysis of the written sources (up to the 6th century B.C.) convincingly shows the naturalistic-power character of the mental spaces of all cultures. This means that in one culture by the sixth century B.C. we can not find any representations of reason and goodness as purely spiritual, independent realities. The thematic approach allows us to investigate the revolutionary transformation of the Axial Age, when a revolutionary transition from the naturalistic-force to the mentally charitable and mental space of culture is carried out. The purpose and objectives of the article. The aim of the article is to show the features of suprapersonal reality and the productive significance of thematic culturological analysis. Research methodology. The research was based on the methodology of thematic culturological analysis, which allows to study cultural processes in individual cultures and cultural regions.Leading methodological settings were the principles of objectivity, systemicity, integrity, unity of historical and logical, interconnection, convergence from the abstract to the concrete. Conclusions. Thus, the suprapersonal reality is a complex, autonomous, purposeful, reflection, a self-contained cultural process, which as it developed over two and a half thousand years acquired the most developed structure and content. The thematic approach allows to successfully study the genesis of both world culture and individual cultures of peoples

Travelling to the described present: mago-space in the Strugatskys’ Monday starts on Saturday

Fantasy and science fiction genres extensively use imaginary settings and locations different from realistic ones but striving to look real. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, pioneers of the science fiction genre in Russia, actively exploited the potential of both genres in their early tale, Monday starts on Saturday (1964), which combines features of the two space types. The present paper analyses the principles of creating ‘mago-space’ in the book. To do so, we look at the spatial organization of the events involved in the plot and the personages’ ideas regarding space. The research will enable us to clarify the role of space in conveying the authors’ message, which in this tale is quite explicit. We argue that the space changes significantly within the book, accompanying genre transformations and the development of the protagonist. Since the tale uses ‘mental sublocations’ as the main units of spatial organization, each part is determined by a certain type of cultural heritage. In the first part, it is the mental space of folklore and classical literature, in the second – that of mythology and science fiction, and in the final – philosophy and science. Mental spaces that coexist and follow various laws form a narrative which turns out to be a journey to the described present in the variety of its forms.

Mental space of Russia in the media dimension

The article presents the results of the study of the conceptual sphere of the media space on the example of the concept “family”. This concept has a high communicative status, which is determined by the special influence of the family as a social institution on the mental space of Russia. The concept has a special meaning for the actualization of key cognitive national stereotypes, and it has axiological content. The analytical algorithm is based on the logic of analyzing the semantic structure of concepts and following the chronological principle of presenting empirical material, which is necessary in this case. It was supposed to rely on the interpretative method of research. The main conclusion: in modern mass media, the traditional semantic structure of the concept “family” meets serious opposition and is subject to rethinking when reformatting the evaluative periphery of the associative field of the concept, the figurative component of its semantic structure. The presented crisis changes are associated with the deactualization of the key axiological meanings of traditional culture, which for many centuries preserved the idea of ideal family relations as strictly repertory. The obvious conflict of the associative zone of the conceptual periphery testifies not so much to the intensity of modernization trends as to the sophistication of their manifestation, which needs to be investigated, since it can provoke a serious crisis of collective identity.

Wheel of fortune: A cross-cultural examination of how expertise shapes the mental representations of familiar and unfamiliar numerals

Numerals are part of our everyday lives and are regularly viewed in less-than ideal conditions. Mistaking one numeral for another is almost an inevitability, and the cost of these confusions could be insignificant or hugely expensive! Numeral confusions can be explained by distances between our mental representations — how we internally represent the external world — resulting from their perceived similarities; yet, how expertise interacts with the mental space of numerals is largely unexplored. We used an identification paradigm to investigate the mental representations of familiar and unfamiliar numerals (4 sets: Arabic, Chinese, Thai, and non-symbolic dots) in a first-language English and a first-language Chinese speaking cohort. Using Luce's choice model, we removed the undesired effect of response bias and conducted multidimensional scaling analyses. Results showed that expertise with numerals alters distances in the mental space, that unfamiliar numerals are represented identically across cultures, that non-symbolic numerals (dots) may be represented both perceptually and numerically in the mental space, and that Arabic, Thai and Chinese numerals are represented by their perceptual similarities. The findings and methods of this study provide a principled foundation for future investigations into how expertise shapes people's mental representations.