DOI: https://doi.org/10.17072/2078-7898/2019-2-145-157

«Texts of things». Traditional text in an epistemological perspective

Sergey D. Domnikov
Ph.D. in History, Senior Researcher

Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences,
12/1, Goncharnaya str. Moscow, 109240, Russia;
e-mail: sergey-domnikov@mail.ru
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5842-2041

The subject of this study is a phenomenological and epistemological analysis of traditional text as «text of things». Text is proposed to be considered a «specific object» and an episteme. The episteme is viewed as a discursive formation (M. Fuko) and a way to learn a language, social institutions and history in their integrated development (social epistemology).The text of a literary monument of the first quarter of the 17th century Tales of a Peasant Son and а group of folk narratives are the object of the research. The way of representing the world of man through the «worlds of things» is a common and even typical phenomenon in the semantics of traditional narratives. The methodological framework of the research is based on the methods of socio-philosophical and philosophical-anthropological analysis, phenomenology and epistemological research. The structural organization of a text and the aspects of the narrative style that characterize phenomenological features of traditional text are of particular interest to philosophers and anthropologists. The socio-philosophical approach reveals the holistic episteme contained in a text. It allows one to consider the holistic ensemble of words and things that organize the textual structure in a synchronistic perspective. The historical-anthropological approach makes it possible to identify the problematics of the topical functionality of things, revealing the ethical and paradigmatic perspective of human existence. The epistemological approach to text allows expanding the possibilities of interpretation in terms of socio-philosophical heuristics. According to the research hypothesis, traditional text is interpreted as text-becoming, the principle of contamination is interpreted as a direct consequence of the archaic way of arrangement through the connection of things (logic of ritual, visualization, daily practices and other topical-distribution networks of the cultural tradition). The study is novel in providing a definition of text in connection with the extension of the episteme concept, which allows it to be analyzed using an extensive body of methodological approaches.

Keywords: text, episteme, narrative, folklore, discourse, genesis, discursive formation, thing, body, ritual, epistemology, phenomenology, paradigmatic analysis.

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Received 27.02.2019

For citation:

Domnikov S.D. «Texts of things». Traditional text in an epistemological perspective // Perm University Herald. Series «Philosophy. Psychology. Sociology». 2019. Iss. 2. P. 145–157. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17072/2078-7898/2019-2-145-157