Abstract. The article deals with the problems that emerged in the beginning of the 21st century. On the one hand, there is a need to comprehend and to conceptualise characteristics of culture in (post)postmodern period, which make it possible to define culture as the “postculture”. On the other hand, it is necessary to work out new instruments for analysing this culture. How can one correlate the ideas and stereotypes of the Russian culturology with the trends of today? The latter quickly appear and disappear while leaving traces in the epoch that has overpassed the postmodern condition with all its rapid changes of pseudo-new trends, “post-theories”, and efforts to find grounding in academic theory though it has not overcome exhaustion of culture. All this shows importance of structuring the research field and creating adequate instruments for analysing changeable and unpredictable culture of the 21st century. The article also puts forward the problem of postmodernism exhaustion and looks at the most important ideas of postmodern theory and their relevance.

Key words: discourse, cultural research, postmodernism, poststructuralism, fragmentation, pluralism, “postculture”, methodology
 

Shapinskaya Ekaterina Nikolaevna,
Doctor in Philosophy, Professor,
Chief Researcher of the Department for Cultural Research in Socialisation Issues
of the Russian Institute for Cultural Research (Moscow)
e-mail: reenash@mail.ru