Cultural Studies and the Teaching of Russian Literature Under the Conditions of Globalization

Abstract

Modern globalization poses a number of questions to the humanities. In literary studies and especially the teaching of literature the question is how to present and make prominent the aesthetic and ethical values of literary art in an effort to accomplish fruitful mutual interaction and normal relations between nations in a globalizing world. The teaching of literature, which is based on a humanist version of globalization, originates in the conviction that for actual, qualitative changes in the globalizing world, the basic starting point is culture, or knowing and understanding culture, both one’s own and that of others. Culture (realized as memory and “a special kind of correlation between knowledge and creativity, philosophy and aestheticism, religion and science” [Andrej Beli]) means the ability and aptitude to accept coexistence and dialogue between different national cultures and their traditions. – For such efforts, in the system of Russian culture, Russian literature offers exceptionally copious material. It can be discovered mainly in the tradition of aesthetic humanism. The clearest example of this can be found in the art of F. M. Dostoyevsky, as conveyed in the author’s principle that “beauty will save the world” and the paradox “we are all to blame for everything”. In the 20^th century the paradox of “collective guilt”, deeply rooted in the tradition of Russian culture, was also indirectly echoed in the famous paper “Alarm and Hope” by the Russian humanist, Andrei Saharov, and was one of the incentives for his call to “new thinking”, and a convergence, linked with the warning that everyone, collectively and as individuals, is responsible for the preservation of culture and life itself on the planet. – In the last few decades, in the transition from the 20^th century to the 21^st century, for the first time in the history of Russian culture, socio-cultural pluralism, coexisting with science, art, and religion as the third component of culture, has become a reality. In a number of excellent works by Russian writers (D. S. Likhachov, J. M. Lotman, B. F. Jegorov, V. N. Toporov, and others) the modern theoretical realization of Russian literature within the system of Russian culture has offered us the opportunity to gain greater insight not only into how the history of a thousand-year old culture proceeded step by step towards the origin and prominence of a totalitarian mentality and totalitarian State, but also how in Russian literature a grain of free-thinking and protest has been present since the beginning. Pushkin’s “secret freedom”, the presence of the so-called “European ternary model” (J. M. Lotman) in Russian culture linked with the Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov and the free thinkers of the 20^th century (J. M. Lotman, A. Sakharov, and others), which regards the human as a value in itself, with the actualization of Bakhtin’s idea that “one’s own culture is shown more fully and deeply only in the eyes of another culture”, confirm the conviction of the importance of knowing and making prominent the aesthetic and ethical values of (Russian) literature and culture under conditions of globalization.