The Charm of Tradition

The article attempts to answer the question of why in societies that clearly belong to the era of Modernity, including the Russian one, a huge share of legitimizing discursive practices is tied to a reference to the concept of tradition. It is substantiated that a person of the Modern era does not actually deal with tradition in its usual sense as the transfer of a relatively unchanging heritage from past generations to the present. It is shown that in modern societies, despite the abundance of assurances to the contrary, we encounter not “tradition” itself, but what is more appropriately called retropractices. Retro-practices, based on the ideas of proper behavior in a “traditional society”, are taken out of its context and placed in a modern one. Therefore, they primarily satisfy the existential needs of individuals in a modern society. Their most important function is that they make it possible to reproduce the relationships characteristic of modern everyday life by providing quasi-traditional alternatives to the relationships that dominate the modern era. In this way, the specific modern space of alternativeness and “freedom” is reproduced. Due to the presence of the space of alternativeness, a person of Modernity deals with a tamed and assimilated tradition – retro-practice. Unlike the ideal-typical authentic “tradition”, retro-practice has no coercive force; following it is voluntary. This is precisely what contributes to the charm of retro-practice (which is usually considered a “tradition”) in the eyes of people in modern societies.