Museum Discourse in the Conditions of Information Warfare: problem statement

The article is devoted to the consideration of the position of museum discourse in the communicative system of modern Russia and, more broadly, in the national security system. In the context of geopolitical challenges and the development of political discourse in the semantics of the pervasive cancel culture in the format of applying new ethics as a symbolic act of oblivion, the national museum discourse acquires a particular significance. The “memory war”, the purpose of which is to delegitimize the previous discourse using techniques of rewriting, ignoring, neutralizing, and denying, actualizes the study of museum discourse in the context of national security strategy. Considering museum discourse as an imperative to strengthen national security, the authors identify a separate research area of socio–humanitarian sciences – “memory studies”, and introduce into the scientific categorical apparatus rather interrelated concepts of political discourse: “identity politics”, “memory politics” and “memorial politics”. The authors implement a strategy for analyzing the communicative effects of ensuring cultural sovereignty and overcoming the cancel culture, and conclude that museum discourse and the discourse of memory in the logic of cognitive and structural aspects represent mental constructs with the potential for dialogism and conversion (including the conversion of cultural capital into political capital), and determine the multilevel combinatorics of various communicative effects in the development of national identity. Hence, the authors propose to study the mutual influence of three discursive constructs: museum discourse – discourse of the state policy of memory – discourse of national identity, considered in relation to the modern political realities of Russia in the context of the implementation of the national security strategy.

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