HIEROTOPY AS PRINCIPLE AND INSTRUMENT
DOI: 10.23951/2312-7899-2018-2-62-85
Hierotopy is a novel concept, originally developed by Alexei Lidov, that is defined both as the creation of sacred spaces viewed as a special form of human creativity as well as a related academic field of study. Sergey Zagraevsky has challenged the scientific validity of hierotopy in his opinion article published in the preceding issue of this journal. As he argues, hierotopy studies a poorly defined “sacred space”, the very existence of which has yet to be proven and can only be postulated in an act of faith. The present paper offers a response in defense of hierotopy. I analyze both Zagraevsky’s arguments as well as the assumptions underlying them, and elucidate three fundamental misconceptions within his critique. Firstly, he misinterpreted the interplay at work between the religious and the scientific in hierotopy. While he directly states in his paper that hierotopic research necessarily involves a mystical revelation by the researcher in accordance with the researcher’s own beliefs, I explain why this is a clear misapprehension of hierotopy, and, in essence, confuses the object of study with a research program itself. Secondly, his perspective on hierotopy from the standpoint of an architecture historian prevents him from recognizing the key role played by icons and iconicity in the construction of sacred spaces as well an important role of performativity. Thirdly, in attempting to assign hierotopy a fixed position within the established structure of scientific disciplines, he has overlooked its essentially holistic character and its function as an interdisciplinary discourse with its own focus. It is due to these misunderstandings that Zagraevsky arrives at a skewed conception of hierotopy, namely, that hierotopic research consists in nothing more than an attempt to divine ephemeral, sacred meanings by way of mystical inspiration, and that it is but a terminological “superstructure” that has no proper object of study, relying instead on substantial content borrowed from traditional disciplines. But in reality, as this paper argues, the main subject of hierotopy is the culturehistorical process of the formation of sacred spaces viewed as products of conscious human creativity. Its methodology is free from mysticism, even while the motivations of the actual creators of sacred spaces can be, and frequently are, influenced by religious views and tinted with mystical ideas. The invention of hierotopy has been a logical result of the evolution of the theory of sacred art, with iconography serving as its essential point of departure. Hierotopy has earned wide recognition and academic validation.
Keywords: hierotopy, methodology, discourse, sacred spaces, spatial icon, visual semiotics of religion
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Issue: 2, 2018
Series of issue: Issue 2
Rubric: ARTICLES
Pages: 62 — 85
Downloads: 2145