POSTMODERN POETICS OF MEDIAL SACRALITY: TRANSFORMATION OF CHRISTIAN VALUES IN THE DISCOURSE OF ORTHODOX CHURCHES OF UKRAINE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31392/cult.alm.2026.1.17Keywords:
axiological discourse, Orthodox Churches, mediatization of religion, postmodernity, postmodern poetics, values, post-truthAbstract
The article offers a cultural-philosophical reading of the axiological discourse of Orthodox Churches in the Ukrainian media sphere as a specific «postmodern poetics» of the sacred. Axiological discourse is understood as a set of statements and communicative practices through which the Church publicly articulates, interprets and justifies a system of Christian values (love, mercy, truth, justice, conciliarity, holiness, etc.). The study argues that under the conditions of the mediatization of religion and what Ukrainian scholars describe as «religious postmodernism», values increasingly operate as mediasigns, narratives and images subordinated to the logic of mass communication and the competition of discourses. This results in semiotic recoding: the alethic value of truth is displaced toward post-truth regimes; agape-oriented values of love and mercy are reduced to short-term empathy and symbolic charity; communal conciliarity is reframed as a branded identity of «one’s own» community; and eschatological meanings are translated into apocalyptic media plots. The theoretical framework combines mediatization theory, research on post-truth as a cognitive-communicative challenge, and key tools of postmodern poetics (intertextuality, montage/collage, irony, pastiche), which together explain how values become aestheticised and circulated in media form. The article proposes an analytical matrix of value transformations that can serve as a methodological template for further empirical research on the communication strategies of Orthodox Churches in Ukraine. The practical contribution lies in distinguishing the normative axiological horizon of the Gospel from its media-driven and context-dependent representations–an essential step for understanding contemporary religious publicity and cultural conflicts around «traditional values». The paper also notes that a Lacanian distinction between the Symbolic and the Real (as developed in Lacanian-oriented cultural critique) helps to conceptualise moments when traumatic experience breaks through media simulacra and forces a renewed articulation of value orientations
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