Keywords: mercy; merciful; sacrament of mercy
More...Keywords: art; artistic creation; interpretation of a work of art; redefining art;discourse;
More...Keywords: oikology; place; home; city; abiding;dwelling;
Why do we return to oikology?Firstly, because we believe that the where of the human and nonhuman existence has a fundamental meaning in ponderings on the dilemmas of the humanities. Oikology is a thinking that conjoins oikos and logos by emphasizing a specific correspondence between the two, as well as that which makes them different and separate. Language and practice of oikos and logos are not the same, thence a concept of home – developed by oikological thinking – would always be a home in translation. The centre of gravity of the oikological thinking ineluctably lies “a little further,” “always further on and on.” We are the ones who have left their home; the ones who have experienced the comforts and failures of rootedness and uprootedness. We are the ones who are gazing from the distance to make something clearer, yet also felt strongly as dearth, a break, a fall. Home – our own, as surroundings, region, community, maybe even Europe, and eventually the world – will be forever marked with this flaw and, perhaps, even the dark. Secondly, pondering upon the where restores to us the meanings once lost and concealed by the resemblance of places, while locality – along with its experiential dimension – restores placement to the human and thus makes one responsible for words and deeds. Place, which oikology keeps finding anew, is entangled with being out of the way, in the motion of distancing oneself from the centre and the hasty knowledge/power. It is a return to experiencing that which is close and distant at the same time. We recognise home in a place off the way, off the world, off the discourses, off the official cultural tract, off the launched mobility of people and things, yet also off the propaganda of stability and familiarity. Oikology invites us to loosen functional thinking and hasty household practices. Thirdly, oikology touches upon philosophy, literature, anthropology, maybe even politics, for it assumes that “home” is as much given to us as continually constructed. Hence it is assigned to us in order that we can face this challenge; it leads to our appreciation of the entanglement of home, place, city, wander and source. An encounter with the city, a spiritual dimension of a place, return to the source, a crack of the post-industrial space and weaving the motion with the permanence of things, as well as quest for the household lore in a particular space-time (Silesia, Europe, the world). Place comes to be out of an individual experience of the commonly available spaces and their critical reading. This critical impulse is indispensable, for the rhetoric of “home” practised in politics presents it as a set of commonplace, unquestioned, thus, in its own way, inconspicuous frames, where our life is located. Oikology makes an attempt to show how unapparent these frames are. Therefore, fourthly, oikology attempts to show how entangled the circumstances where our identity is being constructed in a place really are. Home is not viewed here as a permanent, tangible localisation, but it is an experience to gain, which cannot be neglected in any discussions on the human being. Oikology (the Silesian oikology included) thus leaves the human – be it the wandering or the settled one – with a chastising and alarming question to answer: Are you really so convinced that home has let you go into the world so easily? Has your home gone so easily from you, or so blithely let you go?
More...Keywords: wife of a miner; scientist; system of values; social roles of women; post-industrial areas of Upper Silesia
The problems associated with women were already discussed in works of theoretical and empirical cholarship. Among those works there are sociological works as well. They engage problems related to the inequality of genders, the access of women to the job market, the identity of women, the authority in the family and the juggling acts of combining professional roles with family roles. However, these problems where not discussed from the perspective of culture. Nowadays we are witnessing the weakening of the cultural model of pressure directed to women that they fulfil above all the role of a wife and a mother. The sociological research which is conducted indicates the continuing existence of barriers in the professional advancement of women and the problems associated with combining a number of social roles. Such a situation refers to women in Poland but it is especially so in reference to Silesia, for the roles of Silesian women change as well as the social context of performing many roles: the roles of wives, mothers and female employees. The milieu in which formerly the social roles of genders were strictly separated changes the way in which the roles of women and men are defined. The present monograph contains a discussion of the research conducted among women who inhabit the post-industrial areas of Upper Silesia. The work features opinions about the system of values, the interpretation of social roles – especially the role of a wife, mother and a female employee — and insight into the stereotypical division of the roles of women and men.
More...Keywords: Siemianowice Śląskie.; education; educational opportunities
The work discusses the educational opportunities for children and young people who inhabit the areas of metropolitan poverty in Siemianowice Śląskie. The author refers to the social problems which occur in Siemianowice Śląskie in order to exemplify the problems of the cities of Upper Silesia. In the period of the People’s Republic of Poland, the cities of Upper Silesia experienced dynamic growth due to the investments in the field of heavy industry and the development of the mining of hard coal and metallurgy. However, the transformation of the political system and the restructuring of the industry resulted in recession and contributed to the occurrence of negative social phenomena. At the turn of the 21st century two principal enterprises were shut down in Siemianowice Śląskie, which resulted in the unemployment rate of almost 30%. Among the social problems which the city faced and continues to face there is also its poverty and spatial concentration. The author distinguished four areas of metropolitan poverty in Siemianowice Śląskie – in these areas a considerable part of the inhabitants is constituted by the recipients of temporal benefits granted by the public assistance system. The work contains a description of the educational opportunities for children and young people who inhabit and who are raised in the pauperised local community which may be divided into the aforementioned areas. In order to achieve this goal both theoretical and practical research was conducted. The author used inter alia an analysis of official documents and the survey conducted among the inhabitants of metropolitan poverty who raise their children until the latter reach the age of 18. The survey that was used was partially categorised in which the representatives of public institutions of local social assistance participated; there was also an expert-oriented survey whose respondents included school principals in whose precincts there ere streets of the areas of metropolitan poverty as well as a survey conducted among the third grade gimnazjum students. The work is intended for people interested in the problems of social policy including those whose particular interest involves the problems of educational opportunities as well as for the representatives of self-government authorities and the institutions of local social policy in Siemianowice Śląskie.
More...Keywords: Body of The Maghrebian Woman; female corporality; sexuality; Leïla Marouane
The aim of this monograph is to show multitudinous and variegated depictions of the female body in novels by a contemporary Algerian author, Leïla Marouane. Throughout the entire colonial period, the female body, having been considered a symbol of Algerian nationality, was turned into a token in a political struggle sustaining between the colonizer and Algerians. Thereby, women faced double oppression. The foregoing thesis serves as a departure point for the analyses carried out herein, which are focused on the way the contemporary woman of the Maghreb positions herself in relation to her double cultural heritage, while at the very core of the monograph’s discussion remain the issues of women’s corporeality and sexuality.Part One of the work, which is devoted to socio-political history of Algeria and the history of literature written by the women of the Maghreb, introduces readers to the said cultural circle. What is utilised here is Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory. Thus, both the Algerian field of power and field of literature undergo an analysis. In Chapter 1 an outline is provided of the history of Algeria; from the moment of regaining independence, through the civil war of the 1990s, up to the present day. Drawing upon the conviction espoused by the western second- wave feminists that history is always narrated from a subjective standpoint, the latter part of the chapter narrates the very same story from the women’s perspective, particularly including such aspects as their legal circumstances and transformations of the traditional family model.The subsequent chapter is devoted to the Maghreb field of literature or, to be more precise, its part created by women. First, some major theories of women’s writing are discussed (Hélène Cixous, Béatrice Didier, Françoise Théoret and others). After the said theoretical introduction, the origins and development of the Maghreb women’s literature sub-field are given account of, along with the catalogue of the most prominent female writers coming from three countries of North Africa. Finally, the question of bodily experience in selected works is tentatively discussed, thereby outlining the problematics of corporeality and sexuality in the literature of the studied cultural circle. In addition, it allows to better understand the specificity of Maghreb literature, while showing its opulence and variety, along with positioning the oeuvre of the author in question amongst other female writers of North Africa.Part Two of the monograph zeroes in on Leïla Marouane and her novels, in particular the issues of literary representation of female corporeality and sexuality. It commences with discussing her biography, a life journey which explains her involvement in feminist movement, finding its expression in both, her artistic works and extra-literary activism. Further on, all of Marouane’s five novels are discussed: La Fille de la Casbah (1996), Ravisseur (1998), Le Châtiment des hypocrites (2001), La Jeune Fille et la Mère (2005), and La Vie sexuelle d’un islamiste à Paris (2007). Chapter 4 begins with a presentation of the concept of sexuality in Islam. Then, different facets of female corporeality and sexuality in Marouane’s novels are subjected to an analysis, mainly such notions as: the traditional division of space into male and female, and the related (non-)presence of women in public space; the Muslim injunction of wearing so-called veil (hijab) and emancipation through “‘unveiling’ the body” (corps « dé-voilé »); the institution of marriage in Islam and the virginity taboo; the woman’s most important social function, namely, maternity, along with social control of sexuality and reproduction; objectification of female body as the aim of male desire and violence; and finally, budding female sexuality, the discovery thereof with resultant social ramifications. In the process of investigating the above-mentioned aspects of female corporeality and sexuality in the Maghreb culture, the stances of the following scholars prove to be instrumental: Fatima Mernissi, Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, Malek Chebel, Isabelle Charpentier and others.Leïla Marouane appears as one of the champions of the women’s cause in Algeria. Her feminist involvement facilitates and invites the reading of her oeuvre as a kind of database regarding today’s Algerian society, in particular the position held by women. The analyses conducted herein prove the paramount aim of her works, that is, to expose the male dominance and, in turn, the oppression incurred by Maghreb women. However, it seems worth underscoring that Marouane does not point to Islam per se as a source of the said situation, but rather indicates fossilised and antiquated traditions which prevent women from truly partaking in the achievements of modernity. In her literary pieces, the author in question juxtaposes two generations: that of mothers who are the guardians of mentioned traditions, in their forties or older, illiterate, having been married to their husbands in an early age, confined to their homes, socially and financially dependent on their men; and that of daughters – younger women, educated, in employment, remaining unmarried well into adulthood, and enjoying relative freedom. This contrasted picture of different generations of women reflects real changes observed by sociologists in Algeria and other countries of the region. Therefore, literature in general, and works by Leïla Marouane in particular, become tell-tale indicators of transformations taking place in the society.
More...Keywords: Early Modern visual culture
Public festivities, related strictly to the feudal political system, were a manifestation of power and wealth, of both the monarchs and the noblemen. To add splendor to ceremonial entrances of kings, weddings, or funerals of high-ranking persons, magnificent decorations had been prepared, often by eminent artists. Due to their ephemeral nature, only a few of them remained until the present time, yet thanks to detailed accounts and iconographic sources, such as designs and graphic renditions, their forms and complex ideological content may be the subject of scientific research.The book you have in your hands focuses on the issue of artistic setting of court ceremonies in the modern era, and are the result of cooperation between historians of art from the Jaume I University in Castellón de la Plana, the University of Valencia, Spain, and the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, which was established in 2016. The Spanish contributors belong to the group having the name ”Iconografía e Historia del Arte”, which have been conducting research on court culture and sponsoring of art for over twenty years. The initiative of publishing a joint monograph, undertaken by the Institute of Arts Studies of the University of Silesia, is a sign of ever increasing interest of Polish scientists in the issues referred to above. The book is devoted to selected aspects of the royal and noble visual culture, strongly related to the image of power. The first chapter, The festival books and the Habsburg empire: power and performance, by Víctor Mínguez, deals with the relevance of literary and visual sources as a testimony of the Habsburg court´s celebrations and explains their process of evolution in the 16th and 17th century. (part of the introduction)
More...Keywords: popular literature; crime story
More...Keywords: speech fluency disorders
More...Keywords: body; embodiment; movement awareness; creativity; self-creation; art therapy/ music therapy
The study ‘The expression of movement - body - creation - message’ is an interdisciplinary theoretical-empirical study focused on the presence and significance of the body and corporealness in culture, education and therapy. It includes considerations pioneered by the issue of the body understood as a medium that enables self-discovery, self-creation, renewing of potentials and creative forces. The carried out analyses and reflections on the body indicate that it can be affected by experiences, emotions and sensory experiences induced by music and sound. It is a tool of expression of movement and an object that gives life to new artistic forms. The body is a space of emotional messages, which reflects the attitude towards oneself and also encodes information about the surrounding world.The publication may be interesting and a source of inspiration to people from the circles of humanistic and social sciences, in particular, culture experts, psychologists, educators and teachers aspiring to unlock the creative potential of the body and non-verbal message.
More...Contemporaneity is characterized by change consisting in the omnipresence of the image that has long lost its secondary status. It is impossible to understand the postmodern world without acknowledging the importance of iconic elements in communication, once dominated by the word. The conviction that only verbum shapes reality has become obsolete, as it is precisely the image that most easily affects our thinking, triggers emotions and builds memory. In a fast-paced civilization of rush, concise messages with condensed contents take the lead, and these often combine the visual with the verbal.A plethora of various domains show keen interest in visual-verbal messages: semiotics, anthropology of the image, sociology and photography studies, press studies, discourse studies, iconology, formalism, history of art, hermeneutics, philosophy and rhetorics, to mention a few that involve research into this liminal category. All of these have significant input that contributes to a full understanding of these complex phenomena. Consequently, we have invited representatives of various disciplines to share their academic insights. In this very volume we strive to present the richness of research possibilities stemming from the category of word and image in a number of distinct academic fields. Consequently, no single and uniform methodology or text formula have been adopted.The aim of this publication is to familiarize the reader with research perspectives combining the spheres of work and image and their functioning in the social disourse. The proposed areas of research encompass hipertexts, iconic-verbal installations, word and image in real and virtual space, internet memes, comic books, photography, poetry and visual literature, picture books, graphic and visual rendering of words, visual press genres, posters and reception of images in the corporeal dimension.We hope that the readers will be able to find a number of interesting aspects in the presented array of texts, which in turn will inspire further academic analyses. We invite the readers to participate in the debate on the overlapping of the spheres of words and images, the dynamics of iconic communication and their place within culture.
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