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Third International Research Conference “Mechanisms for Formation of Cultural Exclusion and Frontier Zones”


Anfangsdatum:
20.10.2016 10:00

Enddatum:
22.10.2016 19:00

Ort:
Saint-Petersburg State University, Saint-Petersburg


Organizing Institutions

  • Institute of Sociology, RAS, Research Center for Cultural Exclusion and Frontier Zones
  • Saint-Petersburg State University, Institute of Philosophy, Department of Russian Philosophy and Culture
  • Italian Unstitute of Culture, Saint-Petersburg
  • University of Turin
  • Saint-Petersburg State Museum-Institute of the Roerichs
  • Peter the Great Saint-Petersburg Polytechnic University, International relations department

Conference Schedule and Summaries

There are two aspects of the formation of cultural memory. The first one is memorial zone. The second is the zone of oblivion and experience excepted from ordinary cultural practice; it is more important as it involves more cultural phenomena. Like some inconvenient historical figure or uncomfortable historical event this cultural experience is excepted but not completely forgotten. It shapes cultural borderlines and defines processes of identification. Such zones of excepted but unforgotten cultural experience were named Cultural Exclusion and Frontier  Zones (on the analogy with the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone).

The main objectives of the Conference: To reveal the mechanisms for formation of cultural exclusion zones on the example of the totalitarian Soviet past. Though topographical representation of national culture is nowadays quite common in the field of the Humanities (the methods of exposing of geographical boarders of national cultures are drawn up, theories of “cultural boarders” are elaborated and imagology is actively developing), borderline is usually regarded as a characteristic of some territory possessing distinct outlines. The research group brought together by this project takes into consideration multifactor influence upon the contents of culture and sees in interaction of different cultures not only frontier zones (marginal and containing elements of two and more interacting cultures) but also exclusion zones, i. e. zones of cultural suppression whose importance for interacting cultures becomes rather questionable.