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The processes of alienation in the modern world and their features in visual culture

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Abstract

Modification of sociocultural processes leads to the transformation of reality itself. Alienation is an immanent attribute of humans and is manifested in all spheres of life. Geyer divides types of alienation into classical and modern: that which has always been inherent to humans, and that which has appeared in every society after cultural development. Visuality is the dominant feature of modern culture and its functionally organizing component. Due to the progress of this cultural existence the processes of alienation are being formed, both on the micro- and macrolayers: between the subject and aspects of the environment (nature, work, labor results, and others) or between self and unachievable reality of self (self-estrangement). More and more phenomena are being objectivized by visualizing tools (in photography, infographics and new media) in the inevitable processes of “objectivizing the subject spirit,” analyzed even in the philosophy of German idealism. The totality of images is one of the reasons for “visual violence”: image-stamps influence the creation of identity, constructing it as well as the directions of our journeys and lives. A person prefers the images of reality that are organized in “screens” and “windows” rather than otherness of reality. The images are changed by hardly perceptible illusions of “nonalienated” products of their “own” visual space within new digital media.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge Prof. Boris Sokolov for his advice and assistance in outlining the direction of the research.

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Correspondence to Marina K. Kryshtaleva.

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The study was performed as part of RHF No. 14-53-00044 “Digital culture and the features of visual experience in the conditions of the information civilization”.

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Kryshtaleva, M.K. The processes of alienation in the modern world and their features in visual culture. AI & Soc 32, 117–120 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-016-0657-4

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