Creative inclusive practices of subjectivity formation: an approach to conceptual substantiation

The article is based on the experience of searching for «roundabout ways» of development (L.S. Vygotsky) for entering the culture of persons with mental disabilities. The possibility of developing creative inclusive practices that contribute to the formation of the subjectivity of persons with mental disorders, where subjectivity is considered as the ability for conscious purposeful intentional activity in conjunction with the processes supporting it of maturation of the foundations of conscious mastery of cultural ways of human activity (bodily-affective self-regulation, experiencing oneself and others, symbolic practices of mastering the body and emotions, etc.). Inclusion is seen as the development of a common language and cultural forms of interaction in an inclusive group, and not as a simple declaration of equal rights to social inclusion. The approach to the conceptual substantiation of the applied creative inclusive practices is based on rethinking the biosemiotic concept of Umwelt (J. von Uexküll) in the light of the concept of human as a being who creates the symbolic world of culture as a sphere of his life and lays the foundations of his cultural subjectivity, developing his abilities for expressive movement (E. Cassirer). As a result, Umwelt appears as not just the surrounding world, the biological significance of which is given by the specific activity of a living being, but as a symbolic world of cultural meanings set by the symbolic activity of a person (based on the development of his/her expressive movement) in the collective of creative communication that includes him/her, a model of which the integrated theater studio acts in the course of its work. The development of creative inclusive practices is based on N.A. Bernstein’s theory of construction of movements as the basis for «substitute ontogenesis» and the formation of their own subjectivity and cultural symbolism of persons with mental disorders already at the pre-expressive (J. Grotowsky, E. Barba) stage of performers’ training.