Kovaleva N.B. The Validity of Humor as a Medium and Means of Reflexive-Positional Understanding of the World and Ourselves

Abstract: The article examines the problem of understanding of humor in terms of а practical solution to problems of development of innovative pedagogical tools (models or technologies) aimed at the development of personality and mental abilities of teenagers and young adults. The author considers culture and media reality of «the comic» as the medium of self-realization in the process of finding the inner freedom and integrity of the culture-orienating image of the world and development of creative thinking. Psychological-anthropological imperative "reinstall all attitudes from the beginning" requires special attention to changes in the environment of formation and growing in youth, thus a dynamic modernity of media culture and global influence of mass media are simultaneously a challenge and a kind of teaching job. The author's retrospective review of the theories of humor since ancient times and philosophy of the New Period till the modern concepts of social media, interpretive communities and media culture, regards humor as a way of presence in the world; as the practice and knowledge of the world itself as a construction tool of the dialogical relations. Such analysis allows to cover and prove the theoretical basis for the author's "reflexive-positional" model of understanding of humor and to reveal the mechanisms of formation of the creative personality in the process of rediscovering culture-congruent values and projective philosophical ideas about the "proper". By using specific examples, the author illustrates and shows prospects for using the reflexive-positional approach to modelling the environment initiating the concept of the comic as the factor of developing individual creative positionality. 

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