by Mikhail Epstein

Summary

There are many kinds of dictionaries and encyclopedias in existence, but all are typically descriptive, that is, they describe terms that are already known. A predictionary, by contrast, does not register terms of the present, but anticipates a culture’s future developments, maps out its conceptual and terminological possibilities. You look in a traditional dictionary for an explanation of words you have previously encountered; the operative reference system is that of “extant text → dictionary.” In a predictionary, the opposite relationship is in effect: “dictionary → potential text” – that is, a text that could be created on the basis of the dictionary, in light of the new concepts being introduced into the language.

This predictionary contains 440 concepts and terms that encompass general issues of the humanities, the philosophy of being and knowledge, society and technology, ethics, aesthetics, religious studies, culturology, literary studies, linguistics, and several new disciplines that are only now emerging. The point of the dictionary is to radically update the humanities’ conceptual and terminological apparatus, and to sketch their immediate and long-term prospects. The dictionary could be called heuristic in that it demonstrates various methods of meaning-making, of forming new ideas and concepts. It reflects intellectual, linguistic, social, and technological processes of the early third millennium that call for new methods of articulation. The dictionary introduces the method of projective thinking – which describes the potential design of an object not currently available – to the humanities. By the very logic of its development, the information society becomes a transformation one, based on our knowledge of that which does not yet exist, but which is created by the constructive capability of thought itself.

The coining of new terms or special adaptation of extant words has always played a particular role in the humanities, especially in philosophy. To think means to create a new language, one that goes “against the grain” of everyday discourse, critically purged of trivial meanings, clichés, and the automatisms of consciousness. Plato’s “Idea,” Kant’s “thing-in-itself,” Hegel’s “dialectic” and “aufhebung,” Auguste Comte’s “positivism,” Nietzsche’s “overman,” Husserl’s “intentionality” and “epoché,” the “noosphere” of Vladimir Vernadskii and Teilhard de Chardin, Viktor Shklovskii’s “defamiliarization,” Martin Heidegger’s “Dasein” and “Zeitigung” (“temporalizing”), the “existentialism” of Gabriel Marcel and Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida’s “différance” and “deconstruction” – it is precisely via such concept-words that systems of thinking new to their time are integrated.

A neologism sums up the movement of a thought as it traverses the stages of proof, unfolds amid voluminous verbal constructs, and can ultimately find no better embodiment than that single word that immortalizes it – as if signaling that this thought abides in the language itself, and not just in particular texts. The word “idea” (eidos), which Plato elevated to a philosophical category, has now absorbed Plato’s thought for good – and whoever uses this term becomes a Platonist whether s/he wants to or not, even if s/he adheres to anti-Platonic views. Language caters to the most varying worldviews, which are capable of arguing with one another only because they speak a common language. It would be difficult to imagine the thought of Vladimir Solovyov or Mikhail Bakhtin without the verbal constructs they introduced into the Russian humanities: vseedinstvo, “all-unity”; Bogochelovechestvo, “Godmanhood”; sofiologiia, “Sophiology”; mnogogolosie, “multivoicedness” or “polyphony”; uchastnost’, “particity”; khronotop, “chronotope”; vnenakhodimost’, “outsidedness” or “exotopia”; etc.

Some of the terms included in this dictionary, concepts I have introduced in previous publications, are already in use in the humanities or have begun to be so, which attests to their heuristic potential. For instance, the following coinages of mine appear on tens of thousands of Russian– and English-language web-pages:

– metarealizm, “metarealism” (first appearing in a publication of 1983), a literary and artistic movement of the 1970s-90s.

– transkul’tura, “transculture” (1988), a space where various culture meet.

– videokratiia, “videocracy” (1992), the power of visual imagery over the public consciousness.

– khronotsid, “chronocide” (1999), the abolition of temporality in totalitarian as well as postmodern currents of thought.

Also defined in the dictionary are such well-known concepts as “charm,” “creativity”, “fate,” “game,” “love,” “sense,” “silence,” “soulfulness,” “wisdom,” and “word,” – but interpreted anew in the context of contemporary theories of the humanities, or endowed with a terminological status they formerly lacked. Everyone knows that philosophy is the love of wisdom, while psychology is the science of the soul. The word is one of the basic concepts of linguistics, just as love and creativity are of ethics and psychology. But the very disciplines called upon to study these concepts do not in fact pay them much attention. It would be a rare thing to find, in a philosophy or psychology dictionary, entries on wisdom or the soul – the very concepts are considered syncretic and “pre-scholarly.” Although they are constantly used to define many other terms, they themselves implicitly lie outside the bounds of “scholarly” philosophy or psychology. One of the goals of the Predictionary is precisely to articulate these blank spaces in the terminological system of the humanities and to introduce into that system concepts formerly perceived as purely intuitive and belonging to everyday language (“quirk” or “twist” [vyvert]; “depth”; “the interesting” [interesnoe]; “event”; “packaging” or “wrapping” [upakovka], etc.).

Bertrand Russell had occasion to lament that the system of philosophical categories typically features only nouns (“being,” “consciousness,” “idea,” “matter,” etc.), omitting verbs, prefixes, and other auxiliary parts of speech indicating deeper conceptual connections. The Predictionary attempts to fill in this blank and introduce more dynamic and relative concepts expressed by verbs, prepositions, prefixes and other parts of speech and grammatical units (“to eventify,” “in,” “hyper-,” “proto-”, “nega-”, etc.)

The dictionary may be used as a tool for the methodological renovation of the humanities in their current period of relative stagnation, as they risk turning into what the study of dead languages has become for modernity – the sign of a cultural refinement already superfluous in a technocentric age. The dictionary demonstrates that the humanities harbor great creative potential, and that their role is not limited to the study of the past; in fact, they shape the future of humanity, its pathway to self-awareness and self-realization.

This book is the result of its author’s half-century of work in various fields of the humanities. I studied philology at Moscow State University and originally specialized in literary theory and aesthetics. In the 1980s, in connection with the formation of new literary and intellectual movements in the USSR, I began to consider the question of how the humanities, including philology, aesthetics, and poetics, might influence the development of literature itself and enable such emerging currents thereof as metarealism and conceptualism to define themselves. In the 1990s, I dealt with issues of postmodernism and the emergence of a new cultural formation coming to take its place (After the Future, 1995; Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture, with Alexander Genis and Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover, 1999). At the same time, I was drawn to the interdisciplinary approach involving the juxtaposition and interplay of different cultures, particularly Russian and American culture (Transcultural Experiments, 1999). My interests gradually migrated toward the field of philosophy, especially modality theory (Filosofiia vozmozhnogo [The Philosophy of the Possible], 2001), as well as modern theology, with a focus on researching the spiritual condition of a post-atheist society (Religiia posle ateizma [Religion After Atheism], 2013). In the 2000s, I began to be interested in linguistics and its transformative potential – how it can influence the development of language and broaden its lexical-morphological system (Dar slova. Proektivnyi leksikon russkogo iazyka [The Gift of the Word: A Projective Lexicon of the Russian Language], 2000-16). Finally, in the last fifteen years I have become increasingly concerned with the fate of the humanities as a whole and the potential for developing humanities-based practices and technologies capable of influencing the life of society. This is the subject of the books Znak probela. O budushchem gumanitarnykh nauk (Mapping Blank Spaces: On the Future of the Humanities, 2004), The Transformative Humanities: A Manifesto (2012), and Ot znaniia – k tvorchestvu. Kak gumanitarnye nauki mogut izmeniat’ mir(From Knowledge to Creativity: How the Humanities Can Change the World, 2016). This dictionary thus stands as a sort of synthesis of my previous works in various fields of the humanities.

This dictionary is doubly authorial: all its entries were written by a single author; and most of the concepts and terms featured in it belong to the same person. It was conceived not only as a reference aid, but also a form of advancing new ideas that affect various fields of the humanities. The dictionary as a whole is a sort of a performative utterance, which of course differs from a description or a statement of fact: the performative utterance accomplishes that which it communicates, by the very fact of its being uttered. Such statements as “I promise” or “agreed” themselves enact what they speak of (a promise or agreement). Thus does the predictionary aspire, by the very fact of communicating certain ideas, to enact them, to introduce them into the field of humanities theory and intellectual practice. A performative dictionary is an action in the sphere of language and culture.

The dictionary consists of fourteen sections in a specific thematic order. First, from general issues of the humanities to philosophy and such subdivisions thereof as ontology (being and the world), epistemology (thought and knowledge), and modality (potentiality and creativity). Then comes consideration of the central themes of humanities research: time and history, religion, the individual and ethics, culture and aesthetics, literature, text, and language. The final sections turn to those fields of human existence where the humanities intersect with the interests of other – biological, social, technological – disciplines: life and the body, society and politics, technology and information science.

Naturally, the genre of dictionary does not presuppose reading every section in precisely this sequence; the choice depends on the reader’s interests. For an overall orientation as to the dictionary’s subject matter, it is recommended that the reader first acquaint him/herself with section one, “The Humanities As a Whole” (especially the entry “The Humanities”). Within each section, terms are presented in alphabetical order.

Far from every field in the humanities is covered in the dictionary. Virtually unrepresented are anthropology and historiography, as well as disciplines that study particular forms of art (art criticism, musicology, theater studies, film studies). At the same time, a particular emphasis is laid, reflecting the latest tendencies in interdisciplinary cooperation, on a range of issues previously considered marginal to the humanities: their intersection with biology, technology, information science, cognitive science, modality theory, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality.

A particular feature of the dictionary is that it projects one and the same concept onto different disciplinary fields. The concept of technomorality, for instance, may be examined in the section on technology and the section on ethics. How should ecofascism (environmental extremism) be categorized: under the rubric of life and nature, or society and politics? Insofar as new conceptual terms are formed precisely on the boundary of several disciplines, they may effectively belong to each, which is reflected in the subject index at the end of the book.

One may look up concepts in the dictionary according to the thematic sections and particular disciplines, or according to issues of interest, following cross-references to other terms and learning more about them via the sources cited, many of which are available online. Each section opens with a list of relevant terms, while the alphabetic and subject indexes at the end of the book provide shortcuts between sections. The dictionary entries have a uniform arrangement: the headword is followed by its English translation; its components and method of formation; its definition, and the rationale for introducing it into the conceptual apparatus of the discipline in question; discussion of how it relates to other concepts; and references to sources.

The dictionary as a whole is of a systematic nature, but this is a particular sort of centrifugal system, one that presupposes the articulation of multiple concepts that cannot be reduced to a single compact scheme or broadest-possible primary concept. A centrifugal system like this, with concepts spinning off into various subject fields, differs from the better-known centripetal systems exemplified by Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. 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.