. The centrifugal type of thinking does not subject all the material of culture and history to an overall initial principle, but to the contrary, spawns an “expanding universe” of manifold intellectual practices and discourses that keep spreading further and further away from each other in the space of potential readings and texts. This open system relies on the reader to be a co-thinker and co-creator. Dictionary entries the reader might begin with to familiarize him/herself with this centrifugal model include: “Conceptivism,” “Createme,” “Creativity,” “Total-difference,” “Humanistic Invention,” “Hypotheticism,” “The Interesting, “Potentiation,” “Proliferation of Essences,” and “Transculture.”
All the entries are connected by a system of cross-references, which renders the dictionary readable as a hypertext, a standalone work in the “humanities genre” – not, that is, in a particular discipline, but within the humanities field as a whole. Other writings of mine to which the dictionary refers may be seen as this work’s outer circle, a “beyond” that expands its scope. The dictionary introduces new concepts and terms into the semiotic system of culture through the act of their manifestation – and, as a “self-propagating logos,” prompts their further development in new texts created on the basis of this dictionary or according to its motifs.
The Dictionary offers a systematic description of concepts and terms in such fields of the humanities as philosophy (including ethics and aesthetics), literary, cultural and religious studies, and linguistics, as well as humanistic approaches to nature, history, society, and technology. The Dictionary contains 440 entries distributed among 14 thematic sections (in alphabetical order). Special attention is given to the development of new concepts and terms that reflect cultural and social processes of the 21st century and methods of intellectual creativity.
The author and compiler of the Dictionary is the prominent Russian-American cultural scholar, philosopher, and philologist Mikhail Epstein, professor of Emory University (USA) and honorary professor of Durham University (Great Britain). His unique approach enables a significant broadening of the conceptual system of the humanities: the linkage of various disciplines with one another, and with the creative practices arising on their theoretical basis. The ictionary expands the constructive potential of the humanities, revealing their capacity to generate new intellectual, literary, and artistic movements, cultural institutions, and even spiritual communities. Many terms and concepts initially proposed by the author have already entered general usage in cultural and literary studies. The book aims to develop innovative and imaginative ways of thinking on the part of researchers and students. It is addressed to all those interested in new perspectives on the humanities, as both the science and the art of human self-awareness and self-transformation.
