Digital culture as an object of cultural studies: the problem of methodological alternatives

Modern domestic research of digital culture, according to the author, is mainly based on scientific approaches developed by the Euro-American philosophical and scientific thought. This position seems counterproductive, as it condemns Russian scientists to eternal lag. The article offers a number of alternative approaches to the study of digital culture. The author presents some subject areas and methods of studying digital culture, which are on the periphery of scientific interests. It offers a number of steps away from established research traditions. First, the author shares phenomenal and noumenal aspects of digital culture. The emphasis on the nominal aspect opens up the possibility of analyzing the value-semantic content of digital culture, identifying the specifics of “digital creativity” as a semantic and syntactic process. Secondly, the author expands the ideas about the genealogy of digital culture. In particular, the role of philosophy in the formation of a new digital method of culture coding is explicated, the way some ideas of structuralism, axiology, phenomenology legitimized the formation of this method is demonstrated. Third, the author falsifies (in the sense of Popper) the tradition of identifying postmodern culture with digital culture. Based on comparative analysis it is proved that the value-semantic content of these cultures do not coincide, that digital culture is a synthesis of the ideals of modernism and postmodernism. Fourth, the author attempts to determine the ontological status of digital culture. He argues that the inherent ability of this culture to reproduce itself makes a person from the subject of cultural production to its object. This non-anthropocentric turn generates an unprecedented alienation of culture. Digital culture is turning into a force that dominates man, turns man into a being not just controlled, manipulated, but also devoid of authenticity. At the same time, non-anthropocentric turn creates unprecedented participation person to the culture. The growing dependence of man on artificial technologies puts culture at the epicenter of human existence. Changing the ontological status of culture entails the need for a radical revision of the conceptual apparatus of its research. The concept of “culture” is spontaneously replaced by the concept of “postculture”. In conclusion, the article emphasizes the vital importance of studying digital culture, the need for theoretical study of ideas about digital culture as a post-culture.

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