Categorical semiotics of the vaccinophobic discourse of the conspirological myth

2021

Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Серия I. Богословие, философия, Vol 97, Iss 97, Pp 105-120 (2021)

In this article, the vaccinophobic myth is understood as a set of narratives that have no evidence base and demonise the consequences of the use of biological drugs for medical purposes aimed at the formation of immunity to infectious diseases in humans. The conspiracy hermeneutics of the modern pandemic situation forms new mythologemes, including those arising as a result of the convergence of the mythologeme of harmful vaccination and the mythologeme of eschatological chipping: this is the origin of the concepts of a liquid chip and a nanochip, which were not previously recorded in the studied discourse. One of the basic mythologemes of the modern medical vaccinophobic myth is the mythologeme of chipping. The article examines its semantic structure. It comprises the following conceptions: total use of chips is an eschatological omen; everything marked with a “chip” becomes ritually impure and potentially dangerous; people marked with a chip become easily suggestible and generally easy to control; the chip is in a semiotic relationship with the “seal of the Antichrist”, being either its metaphor or its symbol. Within the framework of the vaccinophobic discourse, the mythologemes of chipping are presented in several versions, namely: (1) mythologeme “Liquid Chip” injected into the human body under the guise of a vaccine against coronavirus infection; (2) the mythologeme “Nanochip” does not diff er signifi cantly from the mythologeme “Liquid Chip” and is, in fact, its semiotic duplication; (3) mythologemes of forced chipping which are in an explicit semantic relationship with the theologeme “Seal of the Antichrist”. In addition to the mythologemes associated with chipping, in the modern vaccinophobic discourse we have identifi ed the following stable semantic complexes of varying degrees of mythologisation. These are “infection through disinfection”; “secret collection of biological material”; a complex of conspiracy mythologemes of malicious concealment of ways of simple and safe treatment of Coronavirus infection; connection of vaccination with “secret eugenics”. This mythological complex is used to symbolically include the concept of vaccination in the semantic fi eld of German Nazism for its complete discrediting.

article

Russian

St. Tikhon's Orthodox University, 2021.

eschatology, conspiracy, medical myth, fundamentalism, semiotics, chipping, technophobia, эсхатология, конспирология, медицинский миф, фундаментализм, семиотика, чипирование, технофобия, Religion (General), BL1-50