Brief textual presentation for Juri Lotman's Culture and Explosion

1. CULTURE AND EXPLOSION A BRIEF EXPOSITION ON LOTMAN'S LAST WORK. CLAUDIO RODRÍGUEZ

2. The fundamental questions relating to the description of any semiotic system are, firstly, its relation to the extra-system, to the world which lies beyond its borders and, secondly, its static and dynamic relations. The latter question could be formulated thus: how can a system develop and yet remain true to itself? Culture and explosion, 1

3. Model for understanding dynamism in cultural production. Gradual progress; predictability and unpredictability.

4. New understanding of communication outside previously established theory. Synchronic space of culture.

5. The moment of explosion is also the place where a sharp increase in the informativity of the entire system takes place. Culture and explosion, 14

6. The outlying of semantic intersections generates new meanings. Inspiration serves as an opposing mechanism of interaction: subject and the masses in culture.

7. Analysis as understanding of systematic relations in culture. Self and otherness, the boundaries of semiotic systems.

8. As soon as we consider the limits of the artistic text, the relations between these lingual mechanisms take on a fundamentally new form. The novel is especially interesting in this respect in that it creates the space of the “third person”. Culture and explosion, 117

9. Semiosphere as an implicit concept, not the focus of explanation but an acknowledged reality. Mutabilty of systems through translation of languages, each resignifying the previous.

10. Culture always faces what is beyond itself and dialogues with it, permeated by the external processes while having internal processes. Order vs. Chaos in a constant, unavoidable relationship.

11. The significance of these slow and pulsating processes in the general structure of human existence is not inferior to the role of the explosive one and it should be added that, in historical reality, all these types of processes are interwoven and act upon each other, first accelerating, then slowing down general movement. Culture and explosion, 141

12. Dreams as an unpredictable, indetermined space of multiple semantic variations. Art, as dependent of culture, expands the limits of it and sets new rules and meanings in itself.

13. Ending as an indicator of meaningfulness. Systems return to their starting point. Life and death relate in culture through individual consciousness.

14. Even where empirical study reveals multiple and gradual processes, at the level of self-description we encounter the idea of the complete and unconditional destruction of existing developments and the apocalyptic generation of the new. Culture and explosion, 173 More questions formulated, with answers that lie in the intersection between past and future.

15. The tragic contradiction between the infinity of life as such, and the finite nature of human life, is only one particular manifestation of the more drastic contradiction between that which lies beyond the categories of life and death – between the genetic code and the individual existence of the organism. From the very moment that individual existence is converted into conscious existence (the existence of consciousness), this contradiction is transformed froma characteristic anonymous process into the tragic property of human life. The end! How sonorous is this word! Culture and explosion, 162