SIGN AND MEMORY: SEMIOTIC AND HERMENEUTIC ISSUES OF HISTORICAL SCIENCES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24919/2519-058X.39.364974Abstract
The purpose of the research is analyze certain aspects of semiotics, hermeneutics, historical cognition and historical memory, the role of the philological and philosophical models in the interpretation of history based on the historiographic sources. The methodology of the research is based on a complex of general scientific (analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction) and special (historical typological, historical systemic, retrospective) methods of scientific research applied to the historiographic texts. Conclusions. There is a semiotic hermeneutic structure in the study on history and historical narration. It appears as a kind of hermeneutic circle from the old understanding explanation to the new understanding explanation or a semiotic chain from the old sign (statement) to the new statement as a sign. The sign system of thinking recorded in symbols shapes human memory, limits and expands it. The signs and meanings fill the content / semantic dimension / space of memory, and record in it facts, events and things of the historical reality. Due to semantics / understanding of events / facts / things, it is possible to classify them in human thinking, place them in synchronic and diachronic series, and with their help (after verification) to create and interprete historical discourse/narrative. The historical discourse becomes an object of individual and collective memory, which signifies, records, and then rewrites, redefines it, as historical reality changes. The historical sciences also include the concepts of ethnology, linguistics, and cultural studies. A historian is a conscious or unconscious semiotician, since he/she expands. History is a text, discourse, sign, message created by a human being in the past, which is read and interpreted by a present human being. Historiography is a dialogue, a set of communicative / speech acts between an addresser and the addressee, who are in different time dimensions and circumstances. A sign makes individual and collective memory long-lasting, historicizes it. Memory adds a historical dimension to signs. The istorical memory and historical science are considered to be: 1) semiotic acts of formulating, coding and decoding messages; 2) hermeneutic acts of understanding and interpreting messages. A sign becomes memory, and memory becomes a sign in order to become history, its signification / definition and understanding. At the same time, they are projected onto the existence of individuals and societies that seek the meaning of events and shape history.
Key words: history, memory, historiography, philosophy of history, sign, meaning, semiotics, hermeneutics, Ukraine, world, cultural studies.
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