Abstract: Reflective Minds and Cultural Autocommunication

Reflective Minds and Cultural Autocommunication

Peeter Torop

Every culture functions as a whole, and the basis for the identification of the parameter of the whole lies in culture’s capability for autocommunication, which is a cultural universal, together with culture’s peculiarity of being considered as a system of education. Methodologically, this is related to the understanding of the orientation of cultural mechanisms.

1. In the direction of crossmediality, one and the same culture can be understood as a culture of a (nation) state or smaller interest groups which control and direct textual processes by controlling politics, ideology, marketing, the school system and mass media.

2. The direction of transmediality in culture stems from cultural life that is a less regulated system, in which the basis for textual production is the creativity of individuals or small groups, which together constitute a plural and complex cultural whole.  In this context, a certain balance can be located between self-education and active teaching (from school system to mass media brainwash), and between exploitation of cultural dynamics and resistance to them (e.g. the case of new media and pedagogics). Within the framework of culture as a whole, the parameters and the standard of education correlate to the state of cultural memory and cultural identity in a given society. Taking the question  semiotic point of view, the formation of a fruitful dialogue between culture’s reality (transmediality) and pedagogical purposes of the educational institutes in that particular culture (crossmediality) represents an important educational problem.