Structure of the Modern Culturology: Semiotic Triad

The article offers the semiotic analysis of culturology as an episystem. Culturology is regarded not as a “pure” academic discipline, but as an integrative project that combines elements of academic knowledge with ideologies. The paper aims to substantiate the internal structure of the culturology based on the combination of social and philosophical traditions. Representatives of cultural elites who embody a social science or worldview approaches are, in one way or another, influenced by the ideologies of the modernity (traditionalism, Marxism) and the postmodernity (neoliberalism). The scientific value of the study is that it proposes a semiotic model of culturology based on structuralism — a triadic structure consisting of theoretical, applied and practical cultural studies according to the three elements of the symbolic order (archetypes, meanings, forms). An attempt was made to conceptualize the cultural method, in which the structural analysis of cultural forms occurs as a movement from diachrony to synchrony, from the dynamic to the static principle of designation. This method is intended to bridge the gaps in the professional identity of cultural theory experts facing difficulties in critical ways of responding to the challenges of the world and cultural practitioners who are at risk of being transformed into carriers of the political economy’s service function.