Floor and underground as objects of topological reflection

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of the phenome­­na of floor and underground in Russian culture with the help of topological reflexion as it was elaborated in the philosophical works of Valery Savchuk. The author shows that after the research published in the book Fence as a Balance of Power by the St. Petersburg philosopher, the problems of floor and underground have become relevant and require their philosophical investigation. It is emphasized that floor and fence are dif­fer­en­tiated where space begins to perform the function of differentiation, that is to contain and delimit. The author claims that it is not without reason that in the Russian language the words “floor” and “half” are semantically linked, with the latter implying separation. In the process of topological reflection of the floor, the author of the article, on the one hand, discovers another basis of culture, which is revealed not through a cut, but with the help of the Chinese analog of the concept “culture” – wen (文), denoting a natural pattern that became writing. Being also the result of a wound, culture as wen is born out of gazing at the cracks-defiles and patterns on turtle shells. On the other hand, the phenomenon of the floor is interpreted in the article in an extremely expansive way: it is the earthen or clay floor of ancient dwellings, the open-air bed, the path in the forest, the bottom of the river, etc., since the floor as a foundation (fundamentum) refers to its root – fundus (bottom). Finally, the analysis of the “torn” consciousness of modern man forced the author to turn to to the study of the underground, and here the novels of F.M. Dos­toevsky are of great importance, which surprisingly echo the ideological searches of twentieth-century subcultures – from Jack Kerouac's anti-consumerism to gadget-enthusiasts and cy­berfreaks.