About the Boundary/Boundaries of Estonian Culture

Yuri Lotman – the founder of cultural semiotics – opens his intellectual testament Culture and Explosion with the following recognition: “The main question in any semiotic system is firstly its own relation to the exterior cross-border world, and secondly the relationship between the static and the dynamic. The last issue may be worded also as follows: how can a system develop and retain its identity at the same time?” (Lotman 2001: 9). Yuri Lotman discloses his response in “semiosphere” – a term introduced by him, which is briefly paraphrased by the theoretician of culture Mikhail Lotman in the epilogue to his father's book as follows: