Situations of the Canons. Part 2

Abstract

This issue is a continuation of the discussion about the canon started in the previous issue, which provided mainly texts on philosophy and intellectual history. However, the second issue covers topics on canon in science and culture.

Focusing on the canon, one commits to the process of transferring. Literature or art canon is understood as a proper way to follow. The classics are increasingly directly referred to science. Classics are not solely related to the classrooms, where the main books of disciplines are studied; it also relates to the classics of Antiquity, where the foundation of the humanities and social sciences of the New Age can be found similar to the way nature works the natural sciences as a fundamental concept.

Here the question arises: is it possible to apply the term “classics” to the intellectual issues of the past centuries, which go beyond the domain of science? We are not sure about it. Addressing to this term frames the evaluative framework of the discussion about the oblivion or collapse of the classics. Thus, “canon” can be more precise in describing possible internal connections and foundations inside the field.

Unlike classics, the canon has no historical and historic presuppositions. Neither it is connected to a particular epoch that should be a kind of common land to all areas of science and art. It forms inside a particular field of activity — art or sciences. Thus, individuals become canonical figures; certain notions may enter the canon field and leave it. One can turn to philosophical foundations from the canon, or philosophy can help one understand or overcome something that transcends the discipline.

In this issue, we have texts not about disciplines but on various intellectual areas: from fanfiction to information in biology. The authors uncover the essence of the canon and the way it is rooted in the sciences and arts and sometimes bizarrely overlapping. Thus, science appears in the article dedicated to the representation of maniacs in the TV series; the STS canon  moves us to literary canon discussions. In some cases, like one with the concept of information in Ivan Kuzin's article, the key canonical concept is borrowed from another field of knowledge, so it becomes a basis in science, such as biology. Sometimes the canon is produced in the practice of writing, as Nata Volkova shows in her study. Hence, the place of the canon is different, however the role becomes more precise when you read the texts one by one.

The issue opens with a conversation with Alexander Filippov held by Polina Kolozaridi and Andrey Teslya dedicated to the destiny and structure of the canon in sociology. The conversation begins with the problem of canon's ambiguity, particularly its educational and research methods. However, the conversation's fundamental problem is a canon's transformation under the influence of inter- and intra-scientific factors. Sociology can explain both crisis and stabilization processes in society, but it thrives in the latter. It can expand and turn to other theories in crises, and the discipline itself changes. At the end of the conversation, the interlocutors argue the destiny of those who use sociological language (like studies and research areas) or seek other foundations of the canon, like Alexander Filippov or Bruno Latour, who unexpectedly emerges in the final part of the talk.

Bruno Latour will also be mentioned in the following text, a study by Nataliya Volkova. The key person of her interest is the one of the Lancaster School of STS (Science and Technology Studies), John Law. In the empirical study, Nataliya reconstructs the School's texts and demonstrates their relations with literary and scientific canons. Her reconstruction is not simply a way of organizing the text. It demonstrates literary structure as a way of producing scientific knowledge, consistent with Lo and the other Lancaster School authors' understanding and proves the relationship between science and literature. It helps to understand that the sociological text is indeed a text situated between science and art. Nataliya’s article is in line with Lo's approach in his reference to the canons of other sciences. It allows the reader to see how the argument (and articles) of the Lancaster School of STS unfold.

Polina Kolozaridi and Lenya Yuldashev's article on the canon in Internet Studies continues the theme of sociology as a part of the canon. This research field is usually disassociated from its status as a discipline, not even university departments or textbooks. By examining institutions and several figures in the research field, the authors demonstrate how canonicity arises from a combination of approaches and themes and attention to the research object: the Internet. A community without discipline indulges in both the creation of its object itself (the Internet) and some discussion of its political role. However, it includes neither disciplinary knowledge nor philosophical debate, equalizes different kinds of classical knowledge and fundamentally does not problematize them. This mode of intellectual action is becoming canonical within Internet research.

Fortunately, in the world of the endless diversity of studies, there are sciences, particularly biology. Ivan Kuzin problematizes the notion of “information” as key in genetics and molecular biology. His article first explains how information became part of biology (there have been alternatives in this formation). However, the bulk of the text shows how other epistemological situations are possible. They are hard to imagine because the concept of DNA, genetics, and even everyday conversations about biology include the concept of information. Nevertheless, using the examples of the mathematical theory of information and various theories of specificity, Ivan claims that both the understanding of life and the role of information can change toward an approach to existence as a general flow, where information as something separate does not play an essential role.

Maria Marey's article also addresses a specific and universal problem: the image of the maniac as the villain in the TV series. Maria focuses on the fact that evil and danger in the series prove to be gradually not monstrous. They become every day and, at the same time, exceptional, which is embodied in the maniac figure. However, this figure does not just exist but also establishes itself as an explanation. Based on the Criminal Minds, the article presents explanations for maniacs from science. Moreover, in the end, it turns out that science and the way evil is clarified become part of the canon in the series..

The block on canon concludes with an article by Ksenia Romanenko. This text focuses on those groups of authors who have been working with the concept of canon far longer and more thoughtfully than we have in this journal — fanfiction writers. Theories of literature (and, in fact, Harold Bloom, who was one of the inspirations of this issue) often emphasize that literary history draws heavily on the stories of predecessors. However, institutional actors also appear in this history, and Ksenia's article is about communities. Both communities and texts are emerging simultaneously; this is how fanfiction is produced. This text also explains the work of reflection on the canon and how it leads to forming new rules.

We hope that the rules for recognizing and being with canon will continue to be an issue for the researchers. However, this brings to an end our two-issue discussion on this topic. Apart from this topic four articles are presented in this issue. The block is followed by Andrey Teslya’s article about Lidia Ginzburg's reading of Marcel Proust. It also addresses an innuendo to the problems of the canon. After all, Lidia Ginzburg finds Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time as a way of addressing reality as it was placed in a world where reality is constantly dissected. More precisely, the novel was an invention of a method adequate to time, a method to reconnect words and things into an inseparable entity. The article by Alexander Sanzhenakov and Denis Maslov also partly deals with the change of the canon. They focus on the sceptic's critique of Stoic philosophy and show how it influenced stoic reflections on the interdependence of epistemology and ethics, which eventually led to the emergence of Roman Stoicism.

The issue continues with our new column, Women in the History of Philosophy, which opens with an article by Maria Rakhmaninova about Simone de Beauvoir. The author focuses on understanding the Soviet in Beauvoir's political optics; this subject is underestimated in the research literature. Rakhmaninova also refers to how Beauvoir herself described the controversy around the events in Spain in 1936 or the policy of the USSR during World War II, her efforts to take (if possible) a neutral position, and her ethical reflections. Fedor Stanzhevskii, in his article, analyzes the criticism of substantialism or the “myth of substance” in Johanna Seibt's theory of universal processes. The article presents the theory of universal processes as non-particular individuals whose model is subjectless actions. It outlines the solution to the constancy problem in time from the theory of universal processes.

The discussion about political biology as a phenomenon of the post-genomic era attempts to critically comprehend the nature and features of forming a new scientific direction. It was conventionally called political biology and is considered “revolutionary” due to overcoming the traditional boundaries between “knowledge of nature” and “knowledge of about the spirit.” In this direction, the synthesis of key ideas is carried out both from biological knowledge and political science. Panellists agree on the partly metaphorical form of the notion of “political biology”; however, they disagree about the mechanisms for expanding the boundaries of “epistemological imperialism” as the new direction progresses. Furthermore, they discuss its potential impact on political processes (primarily related to the dangers of simple political decisions based on scientific evidence) and the deterioration of the political climate. They also have some discord about a result of such actions, about the prospects for constructing new social structures that can limit a person's free choice in planning his life and posterity. Finally, panellists raise issues which may be the subject of future research.

The issue ends with Alexander Markov's review of Yoel Regev's book, which has grown into a detailed reflection on the views of this author, and the announcement of a future scientific conference.

Polina Kolozaridi, Andrey Teslya