The semiotic dominants of initiation physicality

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to investigate the semiotic dominants of physicality in initiation practices, conditioned by both external and internal representations of human beings. The methodology is based on the use of psychoanalytic, structural-semiotic, philosophical-anthropological, and cultural-historical methods. Scientific novelty. The application of the structural-semiotic approach allows us to reconstruct the symbolic system of physicality as a text having an internal structure and to suggest ways of deciphering this text. The semiotic dominants of initiation physicality on the example of hair, hairstyle, mask, and various manipulations with the body are considered, characteristics of their filling are given. Conclusions. Examples of the semiotic dominants of initiation physicality prove that initiation is represented through the prism of a semiotic process in which physicality is a sign and the context and conditions of its expression are initiations. This theory of sign systems provides an opportunity to interpret the human experience as an interpretive structure in which the way a person uses a sign or acts through initiation practices determines the approach to a perfect image. Models of modern man's behavior are based primarily on the attainment of bodily perfection with the help of hairstyle, makeup, tattooing, piercing, aesthetic methods of surgery, etc. This process is an unconscious means of copying the actions of an archaic person who has used tattoos, scarring, and other manipulations of the body in rituals and rituals of initiation. A promising direction for further research is the detailed study of initiation physicality in contemporary cultural space as an appropriate model of positioning the individual in a society, which proclaims the requirements for manipulation and transformation in order to conform to the image of the body formed by that society.