Proto/ meta / ultra / post: sociohumanitarianism in search of a concept

Social and philosophical construction is considered through the prism of linguistic experience in terms of the search for an actual concept to denote the emerging sociocultural reality. The experience of building a paradigm of understanding and (self)descriptions of various cultural and historical epochs, centered on the basic idea of “modernity” as a point of historical and analytical reference. It is emphasized that the difficulties of developing a universal concept that suits theorists and practitioners in the field of science, education, cultural production and creative industries are associated with the complexity of the current historical moment and the difficult to predict nature of the interaction of many factors. The search for ways to reactualize the foundations of national and religious identity is accompanied by the strengthening of the positions of a parallel agenda the practices of gender and subcultural self determination. Proto modern, ultramodern, postmodern, post postmodern, metamodern are evaluated as representatives of the corresponding periods of historical development, performing the functions of defining cultural paradigms and allowing both to explore the current processes inherent in architectonic logic and to predict its possible transformations, the role of actors of future historical changes and the value semantic foundations of their activities. At the moment, the most reconciling working concept for humanitarian researchers is “metamodernism” (R. van den Acker, T. Vermeulen, 2010). There is an obvious need to search for an alter native concept that is not associated with a reference to modernity as a basic cultural paradigm, which is due to the limited lexical field and semantic horizon set by word creation based on a formal and meaningful language game with the concept of “modern”. It is proposed to turn to the understanding of the leading role of such aspects and phenomena of the socio cultural process as the current model of rationality, the technical and technological parameters of the existence of society, as well as the features of communicative practices. Possible accents may be associated with the digitalization of all socio cultural processes, a new version of humanism and the paradigm of the New Enlightenment.