Irina V. MALYGINAMoscow State Linguistic University
38 Ostozhenka st., Moscow, 119034 Russian Federation
Head of the Department of World Culture of the Institute of Humanities and Applied Sciences
Doctor of Science (Philosophy)
Professor
e-mail: irinamalygina@yandex.ru
ORCID: 0000-0002-2145-7953
Strategies of Human Self-Determination in Digital Space Contemporary CultureAbstract: The article is devoted to the analysis of identification strategies of the subject of modern culture, formed under the influence of informatisation processes and the development of the Internet, which has displaced the most important spheres of human activity into the digital environment. Providing unlimited opportunities for human self-realisation and self-presentation, digital reality stimulates the development of new forms of social consolidation, often described by contemporary researchers in terms of "digital" or "network identity".
In this regard, the author problematises the topic of identity and substantiates the need to interpret this concept in all the complexity of its internal structure, which combines reflexive, affective and behavioural intents in the process of self-determination of an individual and his/her identification with social and cultural communities.
At the same time, in the digital space of modern culture, the full-fledged process of identification is often reduced to numerous representations, substituted by imitations and simulations that are unable to satisfy the inalienable psychological need of a person for rootedness and belonging. Based on A.A. Pelipenko's concept, we analyse the role of the Internet in the formation of "neosyncrasis" - the restoration of the lost unity and empathic connection between man and the world around him through digital technologies, in the emergence of a new anthropological type, which is characterised by the subject of digital culture, who tends to archaise consciousness, mythologise and mystify reality, to constantly drift along the surface of discrete worlds produced by digital reality. It is noted that while the freedom of participation of the subject of digital culture in diverse network communities is maximised, it is strictly controlled by a system of prescriptions and prohibitions that are conventional for this or that community, and by the requirements imposed on the symbolic capital of the individual. Sanctions in the form of cyberbullying, hectoring and 'cancellation culture' encourage individuals to conspire their authenticity and subjectivity through various imitative and simulative practices. Based on observations of different formats of individual self-definition strategies in the digital environment, the author comes to the conclusion, on the one hand, about the formation of a demand for a unifying idea and stable bases of identity, and, on the other hand, about the need to clarify the modern methodological and conceptual apparatus necessary for the correct description of current practices of individual self-presentation, which are necessary and inevitable, but do not have the functions and ontology of identity.
Key words: сulture, digital environment, neosyncretism, neoarchaic, strategies of self-definition, representations, digital identity, network identity, identity capital, imitation, simulacrum, simulation, mask, mystification.
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For Citation: Malygina, I. (2024) Strategies of Human Self-Determination in Digital Space Contemporary Culture. International Journal of Cultural Research, 2 (55). 58–69. DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2024_2_58-69
DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2024_2_58-69