TO THE QUESTION OF STRATEGIES IN HUMANITIES (A Case Study of the Russian Latin American Studies). Part 1

The author of the article focuses on the concept of cultural synthesis, which is the key con-cept for the Russian Latin American studies. The author sets the questions of determining the semantic field of the very concept of “cultural synthesis”, of the possibility or impossibility of (culture) generating (a type of) interaction and its boundaries in the case of (historically) diverse cultural traditions encountered in the lands of the New World. The author reveals the different levels of the solution to the problem, offered by the Russian Latin American studies. The criticism of the “pre-theoretical” setting is offered, genetically related to the attempts of the continental cultural and philosophical reflection to comprehend the phenomenon of the miscegenative culture. The interpretative models are revealed, that arose in the Russian cultural and socio-cultural sys-tematical analysis, in which the rejection of one-dimensional socio-historical explanatory schemes occurs. The author offers the rethinking and reassessment of general theoretical and historical approaches, which will allow to identify and represent the process of the cultural genesis in Latin America in its original imbalance, non-linearity and abnormality. The author brings to light theoretical and methodological resources of the civilizational discourse, discussing the possibility of their application to the analysis of the given problem. Special attention is paid to the typological features of classical objects, formed “monoliths”, and becoming of non-classical borderline formations. In the framework of the borderline civilizations concept, the author introduces the vectors of the search for the problem solution, set by the ontological (static) and historical (dynamic) approaches