War of memes: why Z-war won't end with peace

Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

The most overlooked part of Russian literature is of course its poetry. Russia is not so much literature-centered as poetry-centered. Poetry stands in the middle of the Russian sacred literary canon. However, it is largely untranslatable and thus is poorly known in the West pic.twitter.com/ezqrNoxGwB

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Who is the most impactful Russian author ever? If we consider the impact on Russia, it's Alexander Pushkin. He is referred to simply as "Our Everything" (Наше все). Indeed, Russian language and literature are largely based on a legacy of one single author pic.twitter.com/uqoip0pF6E

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Yes, theoretically Russia has ancient literary tradition. In practice however, its *relevant* part starts with Pushkin. Whatever had been written before, is read by normal educated Russians largely as a historical artefact. Only post-Pushkin literature can be read unironically pic.twitter.com/aLYAuYMBbA

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Why Pushkin is so important? Every Russian kid is taught in school that Pushkin "created the Russian language". Did you get it? Kids don't get it either. That's why this commonplace about Pushkin and the Russian language is mocked so much in the internet. What does it even mean? pic.twitter.com/ka7oyUN0mU

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Benedict Anderson gives a key to this question. According to Anderson, modern literary languages are artificial. They were created by the double effect of modern state with its homogenising policies and of the printing press. Whatever existed before functioned very differently pic.twitter.com/G9NSymxMyh

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Premodern world, before the modern state and the printing press, didn't know literary languages. It knew: 1) Spoken vernaculars (sounds-based) 2) Sacred languages (signs-based) In Europe for example Mittelmärkisch would be a vernacular and Latin - the sacred language pic.twitter.com/25lgA1gxLX

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Let's start with spoken vernaculars. The fact that premodern world had no literary languages doesn't mean that people couldn't talk with each other. They had plenty of vernaculars some of which resemble modern languages. But unlike these languages vernaculars weren't standardised pic.twitter.com/EUx9y8rIuT

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Today we speak of French, Spanish or English language. But back then there was a huge variety of Frenches, Spanishes and Englishes, speakers of which "might find it difficult or even impossible to understand each other in conversation". That is just a natural order of things pic.twitter.com/zcPpZIvLgL

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

In fact it may be inaccurate to address those vernaculars as Frenches or Spanishes. The linguistic map didn't correspond with political one. For example, the area of closely related Catalan-Occitan dialects stretched from Spain to France across all political borders, old and new pic.twitter.com/TqRmPnHn9h

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Premodern world was the world of diversity, including the linguistic diversity. Contrary to the popular belief it is diversity which is natural and homogeneity which is artificial. Tons of mutually unintelligible vernaculars - it's a natural order, one literary language - is not pic.twitter.com/oe2fM5VVhj

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

If vernaculars divided the premodern world into separate regions, global sacred languages united it into a number of truly global communities. For example Europe divided into the areas of Romance, Germanic, Slavic and other vernaculars was united by one sacred language, the Latin pic.twitter.com/C24MGDVRrj

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Global communities of the past were sacred communities built around ideographic systems. Latin in Europe, Quranic Arabic in Islamdom, characters in China. Every sacred community perceived itself as a world in itself, possessing the monopoly on truth due to its sacred language pic.twitter.com/48uHTd4B3S

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Huntington famously divided the world into a number of civilisations. However, his classification looks arbitrary. What if we adopt a much superior and more objective Andersonian paradigm? Those who use the same sacred language comprise a separate sacred community (=civilisation) pic.twitter.com/QD1VXSB9CM

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Within each sacred community people spoke on multiple vernaculars. Sacred language was a community of signs, vernacular - of sounds. Sacred language had to be unintelligible to masses, vernacular - intelligible. Finally, sacred language was non-arbitrary, unlike a vernacular pic.twitter.com/yKIqvijLRF

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Sacred language was non-arbitrary. It was the emanation of reality, rather than a reflection of it. Hence the prohibition to corrupt sacred texts by translating them into vernaculars. That meant they'd be unintelligible to the masses. That however, was a feature rather than a bug pic.twitter.com/ceWGkYcHaX

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Consider the ideographic nature of Islamic Ummah: "If Maguindanao met a Berber, knowing nothing of each other's languages, incapable of communicating orally, they nonetheless understood each other's ideographs, cuz the sacred texts they shared existed only in classical Arabic" pic.twitter.com/49lWULHdhA

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

In this respect Quranic Arabic, Latin and even Sanskrit functioned very much like Chinese characters. They all created a global community not of sounds, but of signs and this community hold monopoly on the objective truth. Modern mathematical language continues this old tradition pic.twitter.com/0bA6IAEaY8

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

This dichotomy between local vernaculars dividing the world and sacred languages uniting it into a number of global communities explains a lot about the premodern world. Global vs local, esoteric vs exoteric, high status vs low status, sign-based vs sound-based pic.twitter.com/sqCNEgurNr

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

With the time passing two factors fragmented the unity of old ideographic sacred communities. First, a breakthrough information technology - the printing press. Another factor is much more complicated and poorly understood - evolution of a modern centralised state pic.twitter.com/fh2uJrtIgA

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Even before the introduction of the printing press, some quickly centralising polities (that would later become the nation states) created administrative vernaculars. Operating with too many vernaculars was tedious. It was much easier to choose one and elevate its status pic.twitter.com/WZwfI2OUPF

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

For example France had many vernaculars, all considered as corrupted forms of Latin. However, one of them, the dialect of Paris, became the language of officialdom. It didn't turn into the language of truth, like Latin. But it became the language of power - and that was enough pic.twitter.com/uK3YobsLwm

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Printing press played a huge role in linguistic homogenisation. It's a major bifurcation that determined the fate of vernaculars. Those vernaculars that were printed on, were elevated in status and often survived. Meanwhile, those that were not printed on much, gradually declined pic.twitter.com/ls8VFZzFRj

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Combination of these two factors: state centralisation and the printing press, fragmented the sacred communities and often destroyed them. In a sense the world was de-globalized: previously interconnected sacred space was fragmented into a number of territorial national cultures pic.twitter.com/bu1oEf2Zut

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

State centralisation and the printing press created a vernacular bifurcation which homogenised the world greatly. Those vernaculars that were adopted by the states and propagated in printing grew enormously in status and relevance. Meanwhile those that were not, would die out pic.twitter.com/eXqqYlCwYJ

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani

Administrative centralisation and introduction of the printing press triggered the vernacular bifurcation. And yet, it was mass schooling that completed it. Centralised, state-designed schooling according to the uniform curriculum, is the underrated tool of cultural unification pic.twitter.com/LZ0j1PiN02

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