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Arts & Communication Bakhtin and Groys: Pop culture and hieratic senses

“elevated” forms of art are presented for contemplation, the semiotic definition of culture as a society’s non-
at the expense of the vita activa characteristic of cinema’s hereditary memory, a concept championed by Bakhtin’s
narrative nature. In this assertion, a certain hieratic quality follower, Lotman. This notion finds its most powerful
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is once again articulated: expression in a central Bakhtinian axiom: “Nothing is
Every kind of iconophilia is ultimately rooted absolutely dead: every meaning will have its homecoming
25, p.170
in a fundamentally contemplative attitude, in festival.”
a disposition to treat certain objects deemed In some sense, Groys discerns this relative immortality
sacred exclusively as objects of veneration. This within media culture, even though, in our time, few
contemplation is based on the taboo that protects genuinely believe in eternity. For example, Groys identifies
these objects from being touched, from being an immortal aspect in museums and monuments as sites
penetrated, and, more generally, from the profanity that celebrate cultural memory; in the countless “characters
of being integrated into the practices of daily life. 23, p. 8 that dominate today’s mass cultural imagination,” such as

Even so, this contemplative state does not apply to vampires, zombies, clones, and living machines; 3, p.25 and in
cinema, an artistic form that “moves in time and functions the narratives that produce meaning through repetition,
in a way analogous to consciousness, whose flow films are where “the dream of attaining immortality through
capable of replacing.” 23, p.7 For Groys, every film unfolds repetition is expressed.” 23, p.5 As we know, repetition is
simultaneously on the screen and in the mind of the both the temporality of ritual and a recurring feature of
spectator, occupying the space of their own consciousness. postmodern culture, which often collapses into a perpetual
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The celebration of movement and the immobilization present. One could assume that Groys is reflecting on the
of the spectator: “this ambivalence dictates many of persistence of subjectivity fostered by social media, where
cinema’s strategies, including its iconoclastic ones,” Groys our identities endure over time in the form of posts, videos,
asserts. 23, p.8 An example of this interpretation is the idolatry and digital records of our existence (consider, for instance,
cinema exhibits for artifacts that celebrate the speed of Facebook’s recent option to convert a user’s account into a
modernity (the train, the automobile, the airplane), as well commemorative and semi-interactive profile after death).
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as its destructive nature, vividly demonstrated in slapstick It is no coincidence that Groys invokes the figure of
comedies: scenes of destruction that are “veritable orgies of Narcissus (the mythological figure immortalized as a
the obliteration of anything that stands upright.” 23, p.8 flower) to explain certain practices in media society and
social networks (e.g., Instagram photos, TikTok reels,
Another issue Groys addresses in his video essay is the and OnlyFans content) that transform public bodies into
immortality of the body, a subject he approaches through the objects of perpetual design, redesign, and contemplation.
lens of the Russian avant-garde, specifically the obsession of
a group of Soviet intellectuals with the future of the human Considering these references, we can better understand
body – a philosophical program known as “cosmism,” Groys’s assertion that religion is the “site of a revelation
which aligns with certain ideological motives and ideas of the mediality of humanity.” 23, p.19 Like Bakhtin, Groys
of Orthodox Christianity. It has often been observed ascribes value to religion, which, in our post-Enlightenment
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that religions were, in fact, the first cultural spaces to culture, seems to be returning from the margins to occupy
engage with the problem of immortality (e.g., the finitude positions of significant centrality. This is evident in his
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of the soul, the resurrection of the flesh, reincarnation in body of work and in the numerous references Groys makes
different lives, etc.), and there is good reason to believe to a religious order, such as his portrayal of the avant-
that this concern is also present in Bakhtin’s philosophy. garde artist as a secularized prophet who heralds a time
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Indeed, when theorizing carnivalesque death, Bakhtin destined to end. As Manuel Fontán del Junco has rightly
suggests the existence of a “relative” immortality, akin to a observed, Groys’s thought develops within the specific
characteristic of the human soul, a notion consistent with frames of reference provided by the Russian-Byzantine
his Christian humanism. 3 tradition – a religion scarcely touched by medieval and
Renaissance philosophy, yet one that continues to maintain
To elaborate, what guarantees our precarious
immortality, according to Bakhtin, is the semiotic nature of a particular relationship with icons and representations of
divinity, even in our secularized age (a tendency clearly
cultural memory. Like a plant that withers and disperses demonstrated by the Orthodox Church).
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its seeds, meanings persist in culture from generation to
generation through the ongoing, unfinished dialog that On this point, one final observation can be made,
is history (in Bakhtin’s terminology, “Great Time”), 25, p.170 particularly in light of our postmodern era’s penchant for
surpassing the biological finitude of both parents and “the creation of icons of a radical profanity.” 23, p.26 Although
children. One might hypothesize that this idea underpins the term “icon” is now used imprecisely to describe various

Volume 3 Issue 1 (2025) 7 doi: 10.36922/ac.3978