MY 50-YEARS-LONG ODISSEY

This autobiographical note was submitted to the Editorial board of the Journal «Oceanological Research» by close relatives of the veteran and honorary worker of the Navy, the legendary sea captain Nikolai Vadimovich Apekhtin, who for more than 30 years headed the research vessels of the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences: «Academician Kurchatov», «Vityaz», «Dmitry Mendeleev» and «Academician Ioffe». The materials were handed over shortly before his death, which took place on 10/30/2021 in Kaliningrad. It includes brief milestones of his biography, compiled by him during his lifetime from his diary entries, workbook and other surviving documents.

The Anti-Masters

The author’s reflections, which include an autobiographical note, focus on local research communities, that is, communities where the living scholarly discourse usually unfolds within one paradigm and the teachings of a Master which fill this paradigm. The starting point is the observation, referring mostly to the broadly understood humanities, that the discourse within a community which centres on a Master is sometimes imbued with the critical, sometimes even opposing narrations of anti-masters. In the primary relationship, the anti-masters and the Master confront each other as living people, as researchers who sometimes engage in an open debate and sometimes raise a dividing wall of critical silence. Taking into consideration the scale and the contents of these confrontations, the author distinguishes four categories of anti-masters. He also points out that the role of anti-masters in local research communities is often beneficial, especially from the long-term perspective. Their narratives may inspire and expand the community’s scholarly horizons, including, as does occasionally happen, the views of wise Masters and their faithful disciples.

Medium and the End of Myths

Stanley Cavell opens The World Viewed with an autobiographical note about a recent transformation in his own movie-watching habits. Over the course of the 1960s, he has noticed a loss of interest in attending and attending to newly released movies. It is not too strong to say that The World Viewed functions as an account of Cavell’s personal transformation as a movie-goer, from a passionate and engaged regular attendee into someone who has lost a deep sense of urgency for contemporary Hollywood film. This moment of autobiography functions, as such autobiographical moments do generally in Cavell’s work, as a philosophical datum, a fact of contemporary experience that calls for reflection and explanation. Cavell’s loss of interest in contemporary movie-watching calls our attention to a general transformation in the relations between Hollywood movies and their audiences that occurred over the course of the 1960s but continues to have implications more than forty years later for contemporary movies and their audiences.