Visualization of historical memory in network society: methodological grounds for research

The article analyzes methodological approaches to the study of visual images of historical memory, reveals the distinction of performative and representational paradigms in historical knowledge. The specifics of the performative paradigm which is close methodologically to the actor-network approach is to reveal th e act of performance as a complex interaction of historical reality with modern artifacts that operates as ways of conveying information about the past. Emerging visual image (a monument, a symbol or meme) is the articulation of tangible and intangible structures that can be subjected to cultural encoding or decoding explaining the polysemy of visual historical images. According to the author, the study of the visual practices of fixing the past is still insufficiently explored in social-philosophical discourse, which makes it necessary to identify patterns of transformation of visual images in the context of General laws of social dynamics and formation of network society. The analysis of the relationship of the visualization of historical memory with the modern trends of social development, primarily with the transformation of network communications in the dominant type of social interaction is relevant. This process leads to the fact that historical memory becomes the subject of competing strategies of political actors and the way to achieve the set goals becomes not only the creation of new images but also the attribution of new meanings to the existing ones. Symbolic competition takes place at the level of interpretations circulating in society, visual images, attributing or denying certain values. The main trends of the network society contributing to the actualization of visual images as integral elements of commemorative practices are pluralization, polymorphizaion and virtualization. Pluralization is determined by the multiplicity of political actors that use visual images as tools of appropriating symbolic capital that circulates in the society. Polimorphization involves the impossibility of the only strategy of interpretation. Virtualization is directly related to the emergence and development of virtual communications allowing to transfer the way of networking in the basic principle of the collective solidarity and the starting point of processes of self-identification.