EPATAGE AND MANIPULATION: CONCEPT AND DEVIANTOLOGICAL NATURE

Abstract

The article analyses the concept of «epatage», «manipulation» and «kitsch»in the framework of deviantological and socio-psychological approach. The article indicates the factors of perception and processing of epatage information. Epatage is stated to be both a destructive and a positive phenomenon, a kind of intensifier of emotional and sensual component of human psychology; besides, it is a stimulus of «taste buds» of the settled morality code. The article gives the analysis of matches and mutual exclusions between epatage and kitsch. The author states that kitsch is a tool of epatage and gives a characteristic of the patrimonial signs of manipulation. The basic functions of epatage are considered to be the mechanism of manipulation. The author expresses concern at the fact that the state and the government, using total manipulation, inevitably accelerate the process of changing the system of cultural norms and values of the society on the level of generation. And it threatens to the society with sociocultural and psychological cataclysms (let alone the economic and political cataclysms). Such broadband experiment of the authorities and the state over the people may be the last for the nation, the society, and, consequently, for the state itself.