34
Oleg Bresky and Olga Breskaja
The first concerns the human being and human communities and consists in the
recognition of their changeability. Neither the person, nor the community are given, they
are only set. It is necessary to pass a certain road if one is to reach the individual and the
community. Only a human being and no one else can do this. Accordingly, any social
engineering creating social space without the participation of the subject is doomed to
degeneration turning into the regime that uses terror and limits the responsibility of the
individual.
The second condition concerns the quality of public space. It should be opened for
a person because is a habitat for his thoughts and actions. There is simply no other en-
vironment. It is a certain circle of life and communication, namely a circle of traditions
and mutual obligations, having not ideological, but direct character. Actions of the subject
in this space are determined by the subject’s own logic based on the subject’s status and
nature. There are no obligations and mutual duties, however, as well as guarantees beyond
the borders of public space [28]. Only in the context of the border and border-space the
subject is capable of acquiring a certain status by means of which the subject can carry out
social interactions. Such space calls for cooperation of people.
Relations between the subject and its status in public space assume, that there should
be a sphere of sense and, consequently, internal experience of the subject becomes veri-
fied only in some certain adequate space. But this place also cannot be found outside of
some action of the subject. There is no specially prepared sphere of sense. At the same
time there is a whole number of places prepared for absurdity. In the XX century absurdity
has been studied quite thoroughly, both theoretically and practically. It has been defined
by a set of metaphors: nausea, plague, process, lock... All of them are used to identify the
situation of the initially set world behind the looking glass and the twistedness of both the
subject and social space when absolutely everything becomes impossible: from the respect
of the subject towards himself up to the understanding of the world. Both the subject and
the world in the world behind the looking-glass are just imitations of themselves, thus, no
categories can be applied to them. They are absurd. It is impossible to comprehend absur-
dity, it is possible to leave it only to create a different space, because “... There take place
some first actions or acts of world compatibility (absolutes) related to Kant intelligibilities
and Descartes cogito sum. It is specifically inside them that - at the level of development
– an individual can place the world and himself as its part reproduced by the same world
as the subject of human requirements, expectations, moral and cognitive criteria, etc... I.e.
the whole thinking process is not enough for a thought, even for one accidental thought.
Other things which I called additional or life acts, life conditions which have their onto-
logic or existence conditions of the possibility are also necessary. These conditions may
be destroyed” [29].
There is no alternative for such first acts or preconditions of sense. There is also no
alternative between intelligible and non intelligible. The latter means the termination of
internal experience translation or the death of the subject (in our case it is social death);
the subject refusing sense in social relations, loses the value of an independent social
35
2B-Model of the Borderland
subject. Death is not an alternative of life. Intelligible space is absolutely necessary for the
existence of both the social and the subject which are the only essences able to create
such space.
This is the base of the subject institutionalization if the foundation for a personal
action relying on the subject’s values and norms is allocated in it. This sense is absolutely
deprived of a speculative value. Sense appears only in border situations which bring to
attention the question about the very bases of the subject and the possibility of its con-
tinuation in the interaction with Another. This sense as it appears on the borders is real-
ity immanent, it is not realized, but this is what moves life, due to it some things in life
become possible and other become impossible[30]. This sense cannot be received from
the outside, it is revealed only in personal dynamics of an individual. This dynamic exis-
tence cannot be stopped without the destruction of the subject; it cannot be replaced
by a metaphor, a card, a picture, an ideology, an idea... It is always real and never has any
ready answers. Each answer in this case is personal and cannot be prompted or replaced
by someone else’s.
But it means that there are no true and intelligent realities, that the borderland is the
essence of social life. That “... For a human it is necessary (again and again) to transform
something into a situation that can be intelligently evaluated and solved, for example, in
terms of personal dignity, i.e. into the situation of freedom or rejection of it as one of its
opportunities”.
Personalism and the condition of intelligibility of the social as a feature of the Border-
land mean the de-objectivization of those things which seem indissoluble, for example,
morals, rights, etc. These objective things “placed into the Borderland environment de-
mand preconditions. For instance, morality is not a celebration of certain morals (we shall
say, “good society”, “a fine institution”, “an ideal person”), compared to something op-
posite but creation and ability to reproduce the situation, to which it is possible to apply
terms of morals and to use them (and only them) as the basis for a unique and complete
description” [31]. In other words, the situation of the Borderland allows to correct the
main thesis of transitology concerned about major questions of existence of Eastern Eu-
rope societies, specifically, the main problem lies in the institutions or in the actualization
of preconditions on the basis of which these institutions can exist.
Intelligibility of social space and its institutions also demands the Borderland mecha-
nisms organized in a special way and needed to provide for the subject an opportunity
to find sense and maintain structures of social space, not deduced from personal efforts.
Outside of such space internal experience is deformed and cannot be broadcast, while
the subject cannot be adequately interpreted. For instance, certain values in Europe de-
manded the creation of semantic structures operating beyond the limits of local orders
and logics, being turned directly to an individual, also outside of the context, formed by
the position regarding local orders and their normative systems. Concepts of the Em-
pire, Sacred Rus’, Rzechpospolita, Europe, a state, a people, a nation, a federation serve
as examples of such schemes; all of them are not substantial, do not specify any certain
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