The “Civilizational Challenge / Correct Response” Problem And The Artistic Literature Of The Small-Numbered Peoples Of The Siberian North: The Case Of A. P. Nerkagi

About the authors:

Sergey A. Komarov, Dr. Sci. (Philol.), Professor, Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies, University of Tyumen, Tyumen, Russia; vitmark14@yandex.ru, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4506-4027

Olga K. Lagunova, Dr. Sci. (Philol), Professor, Russian and Foreign Literature Department, University of Tyumen; eleshenka@yandex.ru

Abstract:

The article covers the reaction strategy of ethnic consciousness of the indigenous small-numbered peoples in the Russian North to the breakdown in understanding of the correctness of the response (Soviet civilization) within the civilizational challenge to the country. This overview is based on the case of tundra Nenets and a Russian-speaking prose writer A. P. Nerkagi. The article introduction presents the humanitarian approaches used in the analysis of the specific functioning of a territorial macro-object receiving a challenge. The concept devoted to the permissibility of the correctness/incorrectness of response, proposed by Arnold Toynbee, allows us to identify the mechanisms in functioning of complex phenomena (the literature of the empire) through segments of large territories and their authoritative subjects (the writer as an exponent of ethnic consciousness in an expanded text). This makes it possible to accumulate material for creating a new sociology of literature, improving its categorical apparatus and intersubject relations. Presented in the concluding section, the thematic complex of abnormalities in the ratio of internal and external in A. P. Nerkagi’s image of the characters supports the research concept of the syncretic and traditionalistic nature of the Nenets writer’s literary creativity. It also proves the existence of different phases in the development of Russian national literatures in accordance with the allocation of a three-link scheme in historical poetics. The purpose of the article is to describe the logic behind the search by an ethnosubject of restoring the supporting bases of world perception and the generation on this basis of a new narrative strategy corresponding to the deep organics of folk culture. All of this is due to such conditions where a total crisis of the previous cultural matrix is manifested.

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