The concept of “civilization” in the humanities and literary studies through the lens of Martin Amis’s works

Abstract

The concept of «civilization» has been one of the key concepts in humanities from the 18th century until today. The polysemantic nature and scope of this concept, along with different intellectual traditions of its interpretation, created foundations for the development of «civilization studies» as an interdisciplinary research space that studies the evolution and dynamics of civilizations. The article examines the historical transformation of the concept of «civilization» from antiquity to modern times, analyzing the concepts of leading scholars. The evolution of the understanding of civilization is traced from a linear model of progress to a complex multidimensional system of interactions in the works of philosophers, historians, and cultural theorists. Special attention is given to the analysis of various methodological approaches to the study of civilizational processes, particularly structuralist, postmodernist, and world-system analysis. The contribution of Ukrainian scholars to the development of civilization theory is examined, which allows for revealing the specifics of the national understanding of this phenomenon in the context of global transformations. The methodological approaches to the study of civilizational processes are analyzed using the tools of various humanities disciplines. Combining civilization studies with literary approaches is productive for researching civilizational and cultural processes depicted in literature. The article examines the specifics of the representation of civilizational processes in the literature of the 20th-21st centuries, with particular attention to the works of Martin Amis – one of the leading contemporary British writers. Various aspects of modern civilization, its contradictions and cultural implications, particularly the modern city as a center of civilization and the clash between Western and Eastern mega-civilizations, are explored in his works. Special attention is paid to the analysis of Amis’s postmodernist narrative strategies as a means of artistic understanding of civilizational processes. The research reveals how such pressing problems as ecological crisis, social inequality, religious fundamentalism, cultural fragmentation, and the transformation of human subjectivity in the context of globalized information society are articulated through literary creativity.