The heritage of civilizations in geopolitics is progressively used to consolidate the vision of a multipolar world and, thereby, to establish its important place in the arena of international affairs. Civilizational heritage and civilizational imagination become increasingly important geopolitical factors which begin to shape the relations between China, Russia, Turkey, the United States and the European Union. In global politics during the last decades, in one way or another, Samuel Huntington’s ideas of the interactions between civilizations and their development externalised (...) with the stress on the increase of civilizational conflicts. These ideas made great impact on political elites of main world powers. The author of this article—drawing attention to the importance of cultural and especially religious factors for civilizational processes and the interactions between civilizations, which were also raised by Huntington—examines the peculiarities of the Russian and Turkish civilizational and geopolitical discourses, and connects to those discourses the current geopolitics pursued by the political elites of these countries. The promotion of the current role of the civilization and its geopolitical legacy highlights the uniqueness of civilizations and creates an effort to strengthen the civilizational imagination and to use the civilizational imperial experience and its cultural heritage in current political events. The Russian discourse is characterised by the historical anti-Western and anti-European attitude of Eurasian Messianic civilizational distinctiveness, while the Turkish rhetoric is characterised by the elevation of the imperial Ottoman Islamic cultural and political heritage. Both the discourses are linked by an imperial mentality, orientation towards a multi-civilizational and multi-polar world as well as the demand to create a new world order in line with such an emerging worldview. The article also discusses some of the ideas prevailing in the European Union that underpin the policy of creating a post-national European cosmopolitan community. However, such discourse lacks a cultural, civilizational as well as religious heritage, which brings people together and can form a long-lasting sense of civilizational community. (shrink)

Straipsnyje grindžiama nuomonė, jog postmodernybė yra iš modernybės kylantis kapitalizmo sistemos būvis, kuriam būdinga gyvybės suprekinimas ir suišteklinimas. Postmodernybę charakterizuoja populiariosios ir medijų kultūros išplitimas. Tos kultūros apima ne tik kultūros prekes, bet ir vartojimo būdus, įgūdžius ir jų lavinimą. Pastaruoju metu jos kuria nemirtingumo vaizdiniams bei nuojautoms palankią kultūrinę, intelektinę ir pasaulėvaizdinę terpę, kurioje struktūriškai įsitvirtina genetinis diskursas ir jo nustatomos žmogaus ir jo gyvenamo pasaulio aiškinimo gairės. Svarbus šio diskurso bruožas yra technologinis inžinerinis jo pobūdis, išryškėjęs susiejant nano (...) ir biotechnologijas, kuriomis tikimasi įveikti gyvąją ir negyvąją gamtą skiriančią prarają, iš reikalingų atomų bei molekulių kuriant reikalingų ląstelių dalis ir klonuojant gyvas būtybes. Gyvybė suprekinama ir suišteklinama patentuojant gyvybės elementus – genus ir su jais susijusius procesus. Daroma išvada, jog visi genetikos, informatikos ir kitų mokslų laimėjimai, teikiantys žmogaus gyvenimo ilginimo galimybių, kurios palaiko gundančią nemirtingumo idėją, jau yra persmelkti prekinių santykių, tad ir pats nemirtingumas įmanomas tik kaip prekė. Aptariami kai kurie evoliuciniai ir religiniai techno sapiens sampratos aspektai. Detaliau gvildenamos dvi „nemirtingumo“ versijos: Z. Baumano, kuris nemirtingumo pažadą sieja su kompiuterinės technikos plėtra prasidėjus „Antrajai medijų erai“, ir J. Baudrillard’o, tegiančio, jog klonavimo technologijos „apgręžia“ evoliuciją ir žmogų gundo virusiniu ar vėžiniu belyčiu nemirtingumu. Pagrindiniai žodžiai: genetinis diskursas, klonavimas, medijų kultūra, nanobiotechnologijos, nemirtingumas, suprekinimas. Genetic Discourse in Media Culture: Temptation by Commodified Immorality Vytautas Rubavičius Summary Postmodernity is maintained as a stage of the development of capitalism. The difference between modernity and postmodernity is explained in relation to the new sphere of commodification and resourcification, namely, that of life and of all natural living processes. Postmodern media culture, or popular culture, is peopled by signs of immortality and various kinds of immortals – cyborgs, clones, zombies, immortal human beings and others. Thus, culture accustoms a consumer to immortals and immortality which is concidered as the main goal of a human being and evolution. By nano-bio-technologies and genetic discourse this goal is made scientifically valid, thus reachable. Genetic discourse is becoming the fundamental world-view providing focal landmarks for the emerging future. Media culture supports the spreading of genetic discourse and facilitates its understanding. The temptation by immortality can be considered as a version of modernist ideology of human liberation from various natural, social and heavenly bonds. This liberation, and also secularization, is supported by a scientific genetic technological discourse which is becoming a stimulating factor of postmodern media production. The genetic explanation of the world is particularly handy for technological reflexivity: the entire world is as if encapsulated into human genes, which become the principle explaining the mystery of life, evolution and the future of humanity, thus rendering power to produce the human proper form and the future of people. All the possibilities stemming from the new genetic and biotech discoveries fell under the regulation of property relations by patenting, thus making “immortality” – as a temptation and brand – not only an exeptional commodity, but also a political tool and a commodifying force. As the relationships of private property have penetrated natural biogenetic diversity and, having turned it into a resource, the cognitive subject has reached the goal to secularise the Universe, which he has set for himself: only he as the owner and producer of genes lures people with the eternal shapes of the clones and their genetic information, which will be sustained in any location of the Universe. The temptation by “immortality” will become even stronger when the genetic code is mastered. The future of humanity is related to the mixed forms of life, trans-genic or otherwise genetically modified organisms and techno-human forms that will help to postpone, and later to conquer, death. Even thinkers with religious tendencies perceive the technological improvement of human beings as their evolution towards the techno sapiens and consider such a development as an advancement towards the Kingdom of God. The technologization of human beings is imagined in terms of their divination. Yet in this case the character of contemporary science secularising God and obliterating the perception of divinity is overlooked. Two versions of immortality are analyzed more closely – that of Z. Bauman, who links it with the development of computer technologies, and that of J. Baudrillard, who gives a warning that by cloning technologies humanity is trying to inverse the evolution and to return to the undifferentiated state of cells. The conclusion is drawn that regardless of how we understand ‘immortality,’ argue over its reality or unreality, all possibilities to prolong human life granted by genetics, informatics and other advances in science and technologies, which support the tempting idea of immortality, have already been penetrated by commodity relationships; therefore, “immortality” itself will be available only as a commodity. Keywords: cloning, commodification, genetic discourse, immortality, media culture, nano-bio-technologies. (shrink)