Peerless Dulcinea, Love of God, and Shoah Steps toward the Conceptual History of Incomparability

Postoutenko K. Peerless Dulcinea, Love of God, and Shoah Steps toward the Conceptual History of Incomparability. Contributions to the History of Concepts . 2023;18(2):80-103.Building upon the extended notion of conceptual history as a diachronic study of conceptual interactions, the article begins with deconstructing the paradoxical semantic core of incomparability statements that, it is claimed, endows them with a capacity of stabilizing social semantics. By declaring certain foundational values-positive (Shoah) or negative (God)-"incomparable" and thus immune to the challenges of cross-evaluation, the users of discourse uphold the boundaries of civilized society. On a smaller scale, this exclusion of competitive valuation is undergirded by the ascription of "incomparability" to the small pool of political and cultural figures, literary artifacts, social events, and representative allegories. The conclusion outlines the social contingency of conventions regulating the ascriptions of "incomparability" against the backdrop of their discursive stability across genres, epochs, and languages

Flattery, Fake News and Conspiracy: Three Scenarios of Pathological Complexity Reduction

This presentation sketches out three scenarios of information suppression in social environments ravaged by pervasive feelings of insecurity and looming breakup. While containment (common in totalitarian regimes) strives to decrease the amount of information in the system by encouraging redundancy and semantic inflation, escape (typical for populist milieus) results in informational nihilism (information = noise). Inversely, tolerance (common for conspiracy adepts) interprets all signs—and even non-signs—as meaningful cues reinforcing pre-existing beliefs (noise = information). It is argued that these attempts at uncertainty reduction typically lead to pathological states, failing to reduce the overall amount of information within the systems in question

Personality Cults from a Communicative Standpoint

Postoutenko K. Personality Cults from a Communicative Standpoint. Religions. 2022;13(7): 627.Drawing upon a wide variety of personality cults in religion, culture and politics from Ancient Egypt to our times, the author attempts to present a summary view of this phenomenon from a communicative standpoint. Personality cult is seen as an attribution of universal and eternal socio-cultural significance to certain beings, messages and interaction scenarios in defiance of changes in and diversity of the surrounding reality. The communicative implementation of such a cult involves the suspension of some of the most basic mechanisms of social coordination. Thus, deification of political, cultural or religious leaders eliminates the subordination of individuals to their social roles, whereas canonization severs the ties of certain selected texts with the contexts of their production and reception. Last, but not least, random signaling between the subject of cultic adoration and his or her subordinates runs counter the standard cooperation rules in interaction (‘turn-taking’). Illustrating these points, the article points out at specific communicative pathologies accompanying personality cults and jeopardizing the stability of their socio-cultural environments

Keeping the Spirit in the Bottle: On Pathological Reduction of Information in Totalitarianism

Postoutenko K. Keeping the Spirit in the Bottle: On Pathological Reduction of Information in Totalitarianism. Information. 2023;14(1): 24.This article begins with disputing the teleologically charged notion of unstoppable information growth, pointing at the alternation of informational contraction and expansion in open dynamic systems. Narrowing the focus, it turns to the 20th century totalitarian systems as particularly paradoxical informational environments: Being less capable of processing information than their democratic counterparts and therefore more vulnerable to overloads, they are particularly prone to suppressing informational transmission in some areas, codes and media. Dilution and conflation are singled out as the most common ways of lessening the informational value of communication in totalitarian societies. Whereas the first greatly increases the ratios of signs to messages and messages to interactions, causing redundancy and semantic inflation, the second rolls back preexisting functional differentiations (person vs. social role, sender vs. message, message vs. information etc.) within societies and their communicative system. It is argued that both attempts at semantic impoverishment of public communication in totalitarianism lead to the pathological states, failing to reduce the overall amount of information within the systems in question and precipitating the very informational explosions they were designed to prevent

Temporal comparisons, historical semantics of interaction and ‘post-war consensus’ in British Parliament: Studying time references in a deliberative environment

Postoutenko K, Sabelfeld O. Temporal comparisons, historical semantics of interaction and ‘post-war consensus’ in British Parliament: Studying time references in a deliberative environment. Time & Society. 2021;30(4):598-618.This article aims to demonstrate that the transition from the mainstream narrative to the interactional history of concepts promises tangible benefits for scholars of social time in general and temporal comparisons in particular. It is shown that the traditionally close alignment of narration with the production of historical consciousness at various levels hinders the study of time as a semantic variable perpetually contested, amended and upheld across society. Alternatively, the references to time made in public settings, allowing for more or less instant reactions (turn-taking) as well as expression of dissenting opinions (stance-taking), offer a much more representative palette of temporal semantics and pragmatics in a given sociopolitical environment. In a particularly intriguing case, the essentially deliberative venue where contestation is supported by both institutional arrangements and political reasons (British House of Commons) is put to test under circumstances commonly known as ‘the post-war consensus’ – the unspoken convention directing opposing political parties to suspend stance-taking regarding the past actions of the government during WWII, its immediate aftermath and its future prospects. As a reliable indicator of this arrangement, the contestation of temporal comparisons between relevant pasts and futures is tested in oppositions reflecting party allegiances (Conservatives vs. Labour vs. Liberals) and executive functions (government vs. opposition) between 1946 and 1952. It is shown that, notwithstanding the prevalence of non-contested statements aimed at preserving interactional coherence and pragmatic functionality of the setting, the moderately active contestation of the adversary’s temporal comparisons in the House of Commons at that time helped all parties, albeit to a different degree, to shape their own political and institutional roles as well as to delegitimize their respective adversaries

Flattery, Fake News and Conspiracy: Three Scenarios of Pathological Complexity Reduction

Postoutenko K. Flattery, Fake News and Conspiracy: Three Scenarios of Pathological Complexity Reduction. In: Schroeder MJ, Burgin M, eds. The 2021 Summit of the International Society for the Study of Information. Proceedings. Vol 81. Basel Switzerland: MDPI; 2022: 111.This presentation sketches out three scenarios of information suppression in social environments ravaged by pervasive feelings of insecurity and looming breakup. While containment (common in totalitarian regimes) strives to decrease the amount of information in the system by encouraging redundancy and semantic inflation, escape (typical for populist milieus) results in informational nihilism (information = noise). Inversely, tolerance (common for conspiracy adepts) interprets all signs—and even non-signs—as meaningful cues reinforcing pre-existing beliefs (noise = information). It is argued that these attempts at uncertainty reduction typically lead to pathological states, failing to reduce the overall amount of information within the systems in question

Temporal comparisons: Evaluating the world through historical time

Steinmetz W, Simon ZB, Postoutenko K. Temporal comparisons: Evaluating the world through historical time. Time & Society. 2021;30(4):447-461.This introduction describes the main themes of the special issue on temporal comparisons. It provides the background for individual contributions by sketching the way in which evaluations are intrinsic to conceptions of historical time. Inasmuch as different configurations of the relationship between past, present and future imply temporal comparisons between ‘now’ and ‘then’, historical time is subject to evaluations that we project onto the differences – or similarities – between the three dimensions. Practices of comparing between and across times pervade all spheres of activity: from high-level theory and historical reflection to the most trivial situations in everyday life. Tracking temporal comparisons is thus a way of exploring the broad middle ground between the consciously elaborated theories about time and the ordinary ways of dealing with time. Our introduction conveys this message in three steps. First, it provides a brief overview of the workings of historical time; second, it introduces the central notion of temporal comparisons while paying special attention to the scales in which they can be studied and their performative character; and third, it gives a quick glimpse into the main contentions of the contributions

The Historical Semantics of Temporal Comparisons Through the Lens of Digital Humanities. Promises and Pitfalls

Götzelmann M, Postoutenko K, Sabelfeld O, Steinmetz W. The Historical Semantics of Temporal Comparisons Through the Lens of Digital Humanities. Promises and Pitfalls. In: Schwandt S, ed. Digital Methods in the Humanities. Challenges, Ideas, Perspectives. Digital Humanities Research. Vol 1. Bielefeld: transcript / Bielefeld University Press; 2021: 269-307