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this research, we, as a rule, do not consider situations where a norm that directly excludes possibility to apply certain legal qualification exists. If we imagine for a second that such hypothetical norms exist, however, good examples probably could be: “Anyone is entitled to say what he/she wants, without limitation. This rule cannot be limited by anything, including any private or public interest”, or an opposite one: “Anyone is prohibited from making expressions on this topic, even if such an expression is humorous, relates to nonrelevant events or to artistic imagination”. However, we do consider in present work those cases where the higher norm does not allow legitimating the lower one, or there are doubts in this.228

the invariant nature of the next feature is probably rather subjective, but let us keep it at this stage of the research. In those cases that potentially constitute a subjectmatter of the semantic limits of law discourse, it is in principle possible to raise a question on the “absurdity” of the conclusion on applicability of law to certain social relationships. This concerns that kind of absurdity which is related to the semantic links of certain concept-words and not rules in general (it would be absurd to extrapolate criminal prohibition of murder to a “murder” of a videogame character, “because it is obvious that this article of the Criminal Code speaks about different things at all”).

Why this set of features is determined by the context of medial turn? The case is that the situations we consider became possible and common specifically in the context of medial turn and the context of the whole Chapter 1 of the research can be considered as an argument to that thesis. In the most general sense one can suggest a hypothesis that the key

edition / Transl. from German by M.V. Antonov and S.V. Lyozov. – St. Petersburg: OOO Publishing House “Alef-Press”, 2015. – P. 36.

228 As in the case of Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Violations of the Russian Federation, which explicitly prohibits, among other things, the public display of Nazi symbols in famous historical photographs showing the banners lowered by soldiers of Nazi Germany on Red Square in Moscow after their surrender. The text of Part 1 Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Infringements explicitly prohibits public display of such photographs, but the question arises, nevertheless, as to the appropriateness of such a ban for historical or scientific purposes. Perhaps it is expedient, but this does not exclude the need for a rational explanation of why such a ban is needed, and even more so does not exclude the possibility of raising the issue theoretically.

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factor here is virtual reality which may be interpreted in the context of this work in a broad way. The cases of absurd interpretation and application of law in the context of the medial turn happen in connection with the phenomenon of virtuality, and that is why we see now a special and new case of absurdity in law that needs to be studied. One of the methodological premises of this research is that by far not in all cases the reasons for considering something in law as absurd are connected to the contradiction to morality. At the same time, as the subsequent analysis will show, its analysis would be helpful for the legal problems in question as well.

In this understanding, virtual reality or, simply, “virtuality”, intersects with the interpretation that was given by E. Castronova to the phenomenon of game, when he reconsidered the works of J. Huizinga and R. Caillois in the context of the medial turn and emphasized that in the game (and we can make a broader rephrasing by saying “virtual”) conditions we act “as if”229 something has significance and [moral] consequences. Furthermore, is also especially important to mention that we are interested in such kind of virtual reality that is intersubjective and communicative, either by nature (like virtual worlds), or under certain viewpoint (such as, for example, in case of artistic works where we, in the context of present research, are interested from the angle of “dialogue” of the author with perceiving audience).

In essence, what we understand by virtuality of relationships for the purposes of this research are the “ruins of magic circle” that remain after reconsideration of the previous hypothesis on strict separation of game or unserious spaces. It is mostly apparent in the works of M. Consalvo and R. Stenros that would be discussed later (see § 5 Chapter 2 of this research). This presents the core of the problem: while, from a naïve ludological point of view there is strict borderline between serious and unserious, in the conditions of the modern medial turn – and scholarly understanding in this case is also a reflection of

229 Here we can see the connection with philosophical fictionalism.

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processes of social reality – there is no such clear borderline. What is called by “game” in game studies research, as the textual analysis shows, it much broader – the case concerns a broad range of practices that actually constitute the subject matter of the present research. Considering that the main methodological instruments of this work can be found in theoretical sociology, at this stage we can stop on mentioning an approach by P. Berger and T. Luckmann, on which R. Stenros focuses while assessing the theories of “magic circle”.

In “The Social Construction of Reality” (1966) the sociologists mentioned that

«…Compared to the reality of everyday life, other realities appear as finite provinces of meaning, enclaves within the paramount reality marked by circumscribed meanings and modes of experience. The paramount reality envelops them on all sides, as it were, and consciousness always returns to the paramount reality as from an excursion. This is evident from the illustrations already given, as in the reality of dreams or that of theoretical thought. Similar ‘commutations’ take place between the world of everyday life and the world of play, both the playing of children and, even more sharply, of adults. The theatre provides an excellent illustration of such playing on the part of adults. The transition between realities is marked by the rising and falling of the curtain. As the curtain rises, the spectator is ‘transported to another world’, with its own meanings and an order that may or may not have much to do with the order of everyday life. As the curtain falls, the spectator ‘returns to reality’, that is, to the paramount reality of everyday life by comparison with which the reality presented on the stage now appears tenuous and ephemeral, however vivid the presentation may have been a few moments previously. Aesthetic and religious experience is rich in producing transitions of this kind, inasmuch as art and religion are endemic producers of finite provinces of meaning».230

If we follow the philosophy of common sense (see § 3 Chapter 2 of this research), there should be no special need in evidence to the idea that law, in the terminology of social constructionism, acts in reality of the day-to-day life.

230 Berger P., Luckmann T. Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (in Russian). – M.: «Medium», 1995 – 323 p. [Electronic edition] // «Library of Skepticism». – [Site]. – URL: http://skepdic.ru/wp– content/uploads/2012/11/0458680_BCA67_piter_berger_lukman_t_socialnoe_konstruirovanie_realnosti_tr.pdf_BCA67_piter_ berger_lukman_t_socialnoe_konstruirovanie_realnosti_tr.pdf (accessed: 21.02.2019). – P. 15.

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Therefore, the main question of this research that we conceptualize in the term the “semantic limits of law” is the question of in which cases law (irrespective of kind of legal understanding – the discrepancies between them are not important for us for the time being,231 because each of the types of legal understanding in any case sooner or later is oriented towards application of law in reality of the day-to-day life) may be applied in the other reality, that is different from the reality of the day-to-day life that we instrumentally call “virtual reality”. The alternative realities that P. Berger and T. Luckmann speak of, are defined by “finite domain of meanings”, and that is why we are in position to designate the limits of law researched in this work as the “semantic” ones.

The key quality of the objects of mediaand virtual reality interpreted in the context of present work is simulation (that can also be identified as imitation or mimesis232) as it is, and not just its technological basis. As the researchers note, “...postmodern is an epoch in the development of humankind, which is characterized by a non-linear development, a qualitative increase in the uncertainty of many social realities, which is associated with randomness, multiple variants and alternative development, as well as the emergence of virtual realities, in which simulacra and simulations dominate (emphasis added –

V.A.)”.233 For this study, we will focus on the instrumental understanding of these phenomena in the discourse generated by J. Baudrillard: “Simulacrum in the postmodernist sense is a sign that does not have a referent, a sign that is detached from it, and therefore has lost touch with the reality that it should have denoted”.234 That is why, for instance,

231At the end of the discussion reflected in the present study, however, we will come to quite definite conclusions about the type of legal understanding within which the methodology proposed to address the problem of semantic limits of law in a medial turn is developed.

232On the one hand, imitation, especially in Aristotle’s “Poetics” terminology, has accompanied human culture from the earliest times, but on the other hand, only in the conditions of the modern medial turn, imitation does not become a discrete reflection of any text in the individual consciousness, but forms a persistent virtual environment of referents.

233Kravchenko S.A. Sociological postmodernism: theoretical sources, concepts, vocabulary of terms. – Moscow: Moscow State Institute of International Relations (Unt.) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, 2010. – P. 12. Cited by: Bronzino L.Yu. Postmodernism: Essential Ideas and Their Representatives // Proceeds of MGIMO. – 2010. – No. 3. – P. 98.

234Bronzino L.Yu. Postmodernism: Essential Ideas and Their Representatives // Proceeds of MGIMO. – 2010. – No.

3.– P. 104.

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electronic cigarettes without nicotine or alcohol-free beer235 in the terminology of this research form the same phenomena of virtual reality in the context of medial turn as “virtual property” in multiplayer [role-playing] games (both these examples are not arbitrary – they form part of quite acute problems of practical jurisprudence). However, although this study uses the concepts of “simulations” and “simulacra” in the general sense in which they were used by J. Baudrillard in “Simulacra et simulation” (1981),236 this is where the fundamental intersection of the methodology of this study and the approach of this postmodern classic ends. The paper does not defend the thesis that we live in a society that is almost entirely made up of simulacra, otherwise it would mean deconstruction of the law itself, which would deprive the law as a whole of meaning. On the contrary, it is proposed that, metaphorically speaking, the “anchors of reality” shall be sought, the ones that establish the points of reference in law to define the “genuine” rather than the illusory, which can be formally seen in the view of social reality mediated by law as a relatively closed universe of meanings (see § 4 of Chapter 3 of this study), and substantively in the theoretical sociology and concept of generalized symbolic media (see § 6 of Chapter 2 and § 2 of Chapter 3 of this study). Philosophers point out that, in the context of the anthropological and digital revolution, “we are already struggling to distinguish between where the product of our virtual activities is and where the real objects are”,237 and “we have redundancy in representation, we have to understand which representations are illusory and which relate to reality”.238

235An inquisitive reader can continue the analogy, but we will refrain from doing so for ethical reasons.

236See e.g.: Baudrillard J. Simulacra et simulation (in Russian) / Transl. from French by A. Kachalov. – Moscow: POSTUM Publishing House, 2015. – 240 p.

237“The Realistic Turn in Modern Epistemology, Consciousness Philosophy and Science Philosophy? Materials of the Round Table / V.A. Lektorsky, B.I. Pruzhinin, D.I. Dubrovsky, D.V. Ivanov, G.D. Levin, A.S. Karpenko, E.A. Mamchur, S.V. Pirozhkova, A.V. Rodin, N.M. Smirnova, E.O. Trufanova, E.L. Chertkova // Problems of Philosophy. – 2017. – No. 1. – P. 16.

238Ibid. P. 20.