Clustering of Cultural Reality Topoi

Abstract

The article is devoted to cultural transformations, which are associated, by the authors opinion, with the global development of information and communication technologies, transcultural noma­dism, as well as with the virtualization of cultural practices and clustering of consciousness, which segment cultural reality in a new way. The article examines the options for understanding and using the concept of cluster in science, politics, economics, and gives its cultural definition. The analysis of the cluster consciousness phenomenon involves the cultural-phi­losophical, structural, and hermeneutic approaches. Referring to the positions of I. Kant, S. Freud, M. Heidegger, M. McLuhan, C. Ratti, M. Claudel and others, the authors investigate cultural changes and argue the thesis that modern human consciousness works in the mode of splitting the cultural reality and constituting the world according to the cluster type. The article concludes that the modern cultural rea­lity is taking the form of a global multiplex network, and has some cluster decentralized forms of organization. Unfolding as a temporary and logical unity of events, it forms the identity of the actors involved, and can be interpreted as a key factor in the cultural diffusion of the modern world. These arguments can be illustrated by examples of the tourism industry development, cluster ways of organizing cultural spa­ces, M. Augé’s concept of “non-place”, and other scenarios of the functioning of cultural heritage objects according to new symbolic parameters. The authors demonstrate that, resulting the existential conversion of the places of tourist pilgrimage, millions of people acquire only an ersatz of the culture for which they have undertaken the journey, and the local population itself is being deprived of the symbolic and cultural core and memory that ensure the continuity and authenticity of the local culture.

Stellar Explosion: From Supernovae to Gamma-Ray Bursts

“…Despite these strong evidences, there are some facts which cannot be explained by simple combination of the typical SN Ibc spectrum and non-thermal powerlaw continuum. For example, the earliest spectroscopic observations of GRB 030329 of optical spectra taken on the 6-m telescope SAO RAS 10-12 hours after the burst [136] showed the presence of broad spectral features which could not be produced by a SN at such an early stage. The complicated shape of the optical light curve of this GRB with many rebrightenings [88] and polarization observations made by VLT [52] suggest a clumpy circumburst medium and require additional refreshening of shocks (if one applies the synchrotron model, e.g.…”