Mikhail Epstein Proposes 'Technohumanities' as Transformative Practice Beyond Scholarly Humanities

Mikhail Epstein argues that the humanities lack a recognized practical branch analogous to technology in natural sciences or politics in social sciences. He proposes several terms for this missing discipline, including 'culturonics,' 'pragmo-humanities,' 'trans-humanities,' and 'technohumanities.' Epstein defines technohumanities as the art of building new intellectual communities, paradigms, and modes of communication rather than merely studying cultural products. He illustrates this with examples like Esperanto, created by Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, as an application of translinguistics. Russian Symbolism is presented as integrating primary arts, theory, and transformative practices like manifestos and public events. Epstein cites figures such as Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Andrei Bely, Dmitry Likhachev, Yury Lotman, and Georgy Shchedrovitsky as exemplars of technohumanitarian work. He notes that academic institutions currently have no place for such constructive theoretical creativity, comparing this exclusion to a university without an engineering school. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogical cognition, Epstein emphasizes that humanistic discourse is transformative, addressing creative individuals directly. The article was published on March 13, 2006, by ARTMargins Online, with Epstein as Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor at Emory University and founder of Moscow's Laboratory of Contemporary Culture.