HERMITAGE AS AN INTERFACE OF THE OBJECT “NATIONAL IDENTITY”

Annotation

The article reveals the object “National Identity”, which is unknowable from the position of object- oriented ontology, by analysing the poetic discourse of the Hermitage and the metaphors inspired by visiting the expositions as the only way of cognition of the object under study. In our study we consider the Hermitage and other cultural institutions as interfaces of the Beautiful and the Sublime through metaphors and visualisations. The paper presents tools of flat ontologies that provide access to objects elusive to traditional methods of detection and study (Kantian). A review of scholarly literature on actor- network theory and object- oriented ontology has convincingly demonstrated that cultural institutions such as the Hermitage serve as interfaces and portals for expressing Being and our understanding of it through aesthetic experience and practice. Appealing to Graham Harman’s philosophical principles and concepts such as “quadruple object”, “substitutive causality”, “symbiosis” we show how we can approach the understanding and experience of national identity through the use of metaphors, allusions, including in poetry, which contributes to the discovery of common and subjectively perceived qualities of the object of this multifaceted phenomenon, which is a hybrid object and assembly of a network of actors.

Keywords

national identity, Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, Russian culture, new ontologies, symbiosis, metaphor

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