“Fence Science” by Valery Savchuk: Reflections on the Limits of Civilization and Human Capabilities

Abstract

The article is a reflection on the recently published book by Valery Savchuk “Fence as a balance of forces”. The author uses solid historical and cultural ma­terial to reveal the key symbolic contexts of a fence as a special cultural code. In the symbolism of a fence, the fundamental existentially and socially oriented cultural attitudes are correlated, in which the philosophical and cultural pro­paedeutics of “native” and “alien” is dialectically represented. The fence appears to be a leading civilizational symbol of protected everyday life and mastered space, as well as a natural result of the individual demystification of the world. On the other hand, these structures should be considered as elements of a single civilizational system “house – fence – city wall”, in which the social priorities of the organization of any institutional spaces are clearly fixed. This means that the fence is a border separating/uniting man and nature, man and society, “city” and “world”, turning into an integral element of the institutional topology of civ­ilization, physically and symbolically holding collective bodies in the space of power. The sacralization of power inevitably turns the fence into a symbol of social domination over nature within the boundaries of established laws and reg­ulations. Such limits are extensively reproduced by stratifying and preserving panoptic environments, acting as visible indicators and conduits of social alien­ation, whereas new technological conditions only aggravate anthropological and institutional isolationism every time, condemning civilization to previously un­precedented tragedies of separation and loneliness.