The unbearable space of stories: The category of life in journalism

V.S. Varakin

M.V. Lomonosov Northern (Arctic) Federal University, Arkhangelsk, 163002 Russia

E-mail: djurnapopuli@gmail.com

Received March 12, 2018

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Abstract

Understanding the life as human presence in journalism has been analyzed using the conceptual apparatus of G. Simmel’s “philosophy of life”. The procedure of understanding is considered as an action of intrusion from within the borders of life into the life. This can be also interpreted as moving over life. It has been shown that journalism destroys the meaning of external zones by creating narratives about them, and these narratives are later transformed into the narratives of life. As journalistic narratives are always about someone, they can be designated as “stories”. Every journalistic story turns out to be such an event of life, which should be defined as an antinomy. Along with other stories, it forms the ramified network of a kind of pauses in narrations of the life itself, or, in other words, the informational series. Considering that the life is unbearably catastrophic, the space of journalistic stories about it has been defined as unbearable as well. The main idea of the paper is that journalism can think, but is actually unable to do it – this feature reveals why journalism produces the seeming knowledge of life.

Keywords: philosophy of life, G. Simmel, understanding of life, intrusion into life, borders of life, catastrophism of life, intellection, journalistic story, journalistic narrative, seeming knowledge

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For citation: Varakin V.S. The unbearable space of stories: The category of life in journalism. Uchenye Zapiski Kazanskogo Universiteta. Seriya Gumanitarnye Nauki, 2018, vol. 160, no. 4, pp. 860–871. (In Russian)

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