Collective experience of precarity in modern culture (in memory of T.G.Stefanenko)

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the memory of T.G.Stefanenko, who made the contribution to the revival of ethnopsychology in post-Soviet Russia. Her conceptual thinking about culture, social and ethnic identity, collective experience continues and develops Russian traditions of philosophical, psychological and historical thought, in particular, G.Shpet and B.F.Porshnev, that are analyzed in the context of modern political and social theory (J.Butler, C.Mouffe, R.Brubaker).The cultural-historical character of the crisis of the identity or loss of Self of a modern person is most expressed in the collective experience of the «transcendental devastation» of culture, whose symbolic-semantic forms don’t work anymore and leave us confused by the transformations (this moment is most clearly articulated in the works of Z.Bauman). In the perspective of the aesthetic paradigm in psychology (T.D.Martsinkovskaya) the question is raised about the possibility of studying of this new type of experience through art, in particular, the films of K.Muratova, memoirs of L.Ya.Ginzburg, S.Calle’s art projects. The phenomenon of the identity crisis is interpreted through the categories of precarity, that is one of the central conception of the J. Butler’s performative theory of assemblies. Precarity means a politically conditioned position of certain social groups that are more exposed to trauma, violence and, as a result, death without sorrow. Collective experience of precarity as intersubjective vulnerability is considered in the context of «fragility» of actual aesthetic practices. The article concludes that the T.G.Stefanenko’s disciplinary project of ethnopsychology allows to explore the collective experience of vulnerability and insecurity, expressed in the «identity crisis» and the fear of «loss of self», as the initial basis of sociality. Thus, the key issue of ethnopsychology is the shaping of cultural sensitivity and openness to the Other, which is not only the main theme of Tatiana Gavrilovna's scientific works, but also an integral feature of her personality.