Varia: Authority (In)Quest in Collective Imagination and its Phantasmatic Extensions in Existence (Hypomneumata) Cover Image

Varia: Autorytety "podejrzane" w wyobraźni zbiorowej i ich fantazmatyczne przedłużenia w egzystencji (hypomneumata)
Varia: Authority (In)Quest in Collective Imagination and its Phantasmatic Extensions in Existence (Hypomneumata)

Author(s): Monika Jaworowska-Witkowska
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the notion of authority in the humanities from the perspective of the voices of cultural margins and thresholds. Written in form of what Michel Foucault calls hypomneumata—notes, observations, mental sketches without a centralizing structure—the text examines the significance of cultural phenomena that locate themselves on the outside of the mainstream of forces that shape the intellectual and ideological currents of contemporary philosophical perspective. Inspired by Jungian depth psychology, the article discusses such collective archetypes as the Mother, the Wise Old Man, the Trickster, the Vampire, the Doppelganger, and others, tracing their potential yet essentially muted influence on the consciousness of culture. Without an “authoritarian” prescriptive conclusion, the text is an invitation towards the opening of one’s awareness at the voices of those non-authorities, in hope of acquiring wisdom inaccessible through the teachings of conventional cultural masters.

  • Issue Year: 2013
  • Issue No: 26
  • Page Range: 73-109
  • Page Count: 37