Dejiny Rumunov podľa Catherine Durandin

Author(s): Jana Páleníková / Language(s): Issue: 2/2015

Modern Romania did not originate or develop in the same way as other western national state formations did. Its history is specific and must be approached as the history of Romanians, not Romania. Catherine Durandin, a French historian, claims that renewing the memory and collective consciousness may help to better understand the structures, the basic focal points and the rifts in the historical time than a direct interpretation of events. This is why she based her view on the history of Romanians on important milestones, on their location within a certain geopolitical area. She thus derives her search for the Romanians’ ways of approaching their modernity and sovereignty from this point. The Romanian phenomenon appears as a reactive identity in its strained relationship with the West, the East, Central Europe, and the Balkans. The best way how to learn to understand Romanians is to understand these tensions.

The counter-modern Eliade. "Wiederverzauberung der Welt" in the life and work of Mircea Eliade

Author(s): Radu Vancu / Language(s): Issue: 2/2015

The present article aims at proving that Mircea Eliade was decisively a counter-modern in everything he wrote, including literary, scholarly, and political works. It re-reads Eliade’s oeuvre using the concept of counter-modern as an ideological filter, in order to demonstrate how the apparent proteism and entropy of Eliade’s oeuvre thus becomes homogenous and consistent. Eliade’s counter-modern work can teach us how to recognize remnants of the sacred; he conceived his work as a vade mecum in this regard. This is why he appealed, in his early work, to those cultures where the mystical structures were still present, still central, still recognizable; namely, the Oriental cultures. And this is also why, towards the end of his activity, which coincided with the end of modernity, he felt that he could at last openly speak, as we have seen, about the necessity of reintroducing the sacred into a desacralized society. Eliade’s work in the literary, scholarly, and political realms is nothing less than a vade mecum for the re-enchantment of the world. And this is also why it so fascinates readers situated beyond historical modernity: this counter-modern thinker can teach those of us who have survived a disenchanted modernity, how to re-enchant our world.

Uncomfortable spaces: language and identity in Herta Müller’s work

Author(s): Doris Mironescu / Language(s): Issue: 2/2015

The problem of identity in Herta Müller’s work presents the reader with a number of difficulties. First, there is the complicated mix of Romanian and German (Banat-Swabian, to be precise) culture of the region of this author’s upbringing. However, because of her experience of trauma and painful testimonies from a family consumed with guilt during a time of state oppression, Müller refrains from choosing a singular version of cultural identity as representative for the individual, and neither does she opt for a definition of personal identity as something isolated, self-sufficient, and untainted by the others’ collective identity. This article addresses the question of identity in Herta Müller’s works using the multiple, almost obsessive references to (Romanian) language and culture in her work. First, the German author’s intertextual connections to Romanian literature are explored. The second part of the article is concerned with Müller’s poetics and her reflections on language. The space between languages becomes an apt metaphor for a fragmented and troubled identity, which is more the result of chance than of choice. Her encounter with Romanian language is a decisive cognitive experience whereby the writer becomes fascinated by the divergences between words and things. Living in an oppressive, dictatorial regime means assimilating that space with a culture of violence that can only be exorcised later, through a resort to the critique of nationalist clichés in her Romanian volume Este sau nu este Ion (To Be or Not to Be Ion, 2005). Since culture is defined as plural and ambiguous, it appears that the space of identity is neither inside one culture, nor outside all of them. As Herta Müller’s multilingual puns and enigmatic metaphors show, identity is to be found in the colourful and haunting space between languages and cultures.

From the linguistic turn to the referential turn: the metamorphosis of theory in Thomas G. Pavel’s and Lubomír Doležel’s criticism

Author(s): Alex Goldiş / Language(s): Issue: 2/2015

This paper delineates the conditions of theoretical transformations in the works of Lubomír Doležel and Thomas G. Pavel, starting from the assumption that their cultural evolution has been similar. Not only did they share the same ideological background, common to the East and Central European countries under the Soviet regime, but their theoretical options were coloured by the same dilemmas. Originally promoters of the structuralist linguistic methods, they both embraced linguistic approaches to literature in their first books only to depart from them later in favour of the possible worlds theory. That’s why a comparative focus on the stages of their evolution from the linguistic turn to the referential turn is needed. The study emphasizes both the specificities of this evolution – indebted to the autochthonous tradition of the two authors – and its paradigmatic aspect: the mobility of their theoretical reflection enacts the metamorphosis of the literary studies throughout the last half century.

Romanian literature for the world: a matter of property

Author(s): Andrei Terian / Language(s): Issue: 2/2015

Starting from the recent developments in the fields of transnational studies and world literature, this article analyses the presence of Romanian literature in the world and its specific manner of relating to the world. Thus, my paper consists of three parts. The first part approaches, in short, the way in which Romanian culture envisaged national literature, world literature, and the relationship between the two over the past two centuries. The second part is an attempt to systematize the manner in which Romanian literature asserted its presence in the world until now, by identifying four successive waves of its dissemination beyond national borders (the avant-garde, the Young Generation, trauma literature, and the comparatist wave). Finally, the third part of the article poses a new approach toward the problem, meant to contribute to a better understanding and, at the same time, an improvement of the presence of Romanian literature in the world.

Recenzie

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): Issue: 2/2015

Virgil Nemoianu: Postmodernism and Cultural Identities: Conflicts and Coexistence; Adriana Raducanu: Speaking the Language of the Night: Aspects of the Gothic in Selected Contemporary Novels; Rudolf Chmel: Jelen és történelem. Az etnokráciától a demokráciáig; Ivana Taranenková (ed.): Možnosti autobiografickosti; Matteo Colombi (Hg.): Stadt – Mord – Ordnung. Urbane Topographien des Verbrechens in der Kriminalliteratur aus Ost- und Mitteleuropa; Ioana Popa: Traduire sous contraintes. Littérature et communisme (1947 – 1989)

The glass bead game: Matei Calinescu and the secret life of concepts

Author(s): Monica Spiridon / Language(s): Issue: 2/2015

This paper looks at Matei Calinescu’s theoretical output, with a view to identifying a common denominator: his keen interest in conceptual tools as hypothetical constructs, as well as in their self-reflective potential. The ways in which Calinescu defines and uses the concepts of modernity, postmodernity and rereading pertain to an area which is always of key importance in intellectual discourses: the relationship between trans-historic, systematic conceptualization, on the one hand, and historical experience on the other. As well as the nominalist appeal of the author, his work also betrays his concern with the pressures exerted on art by various historical contexts. Specifically, the Romanian-born theorist boldly asserts that our aesthetic postulates and hypotheses are strongly shaped by the particular intellectual discourse of a specific era rather than by the particular creative strategies of that time.

Engels i Tołstoj. Podmiotowość w epoce wojny totalnej

Author(s): Michał Sokolski / Language(s): Issue: 32/2014

The purpose of this article is to compare the philosophical insights on war offered in the writings of Friedrich Engels and Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Their views are treated as two different but complementary approaches to solve the problem of relation between the absolute and the real war, as posed by Carl von Clausewitz. According to Clausewitz, the armed forces, including the supporting civilian facilities, could be treated as a sort of "war machine" which, in the time of peace, remains under the control of political institutions. At the outbreak of war, the army apparatus tends to gain self-reliance, directing more and more to its own imperative: "destroy the enemy at all costs". This process is greatly facilitated by the prolonged lack of conclusive victory by either of warring parties. As a result, a "real war", which was started to accomplish some political goal, is gradually turning into an "absolute war", which is the aim in itself. Both Engels and Tolstoy offered a series of in-depth analysis of the phenomenon of selfempowerment of "war machine". In the conclusion, both perspectives are analyzed in terms of Althusserian theory of ideology, which offers the coherent theoretical frame allowing to propose some potentially fruitful practical directives.

Niejedno słowo o obrazowaniu

Author(s): Ryszard Różanowski / Language(s): Issue: 32/2014

not available

Fryderyk Engels, Karol Marks - religia jako opium ludu

Author(s): Jerzy Kochan / Language(s): Issue: 32/2014

The main aim of the paper is connected with attempt of reconstruction of Engels and Marx's theory of religion, among others the meaning of the formula "religion is the opium of the people". The second part of the article is devoted to the confrontation classical Marxism also the creators of their theoretical adaptation in conditions of real socialism by the Polish Marxist Jaroslaw Ładosz and the phenomenon of liberation theology.

Trzy typy antagonizmów

Author(s): Tymoteusz Kochan / Language(s): Issue: 32/2014

The main goal of this paper is to describe the three main types of class antagonisms as pointed by the author, based on the marxist idea of class warfare. These types are: the system antagonism — which occurs inside specific systems; the class antagonism — which can be observed inside proletariat and inside different, specific classes, and formation antagonism which is the valid antagonism between revolutionary and reactionary social classes, leading to critical contradictions and to the process of revolution. The modern capitalist society of Europe and western, imperialist capitalisms is described as a non-revolutionary, individualist system, where proletariat goals are shared with the goals of the class of capitalists. Therefore — the class contradictions existing in First World countries aren't contradictions leading to the real antagonism on the formations level, which is necessary to occur if the capitalism is to be replaced with socialism. The theory of revolution presented in the article points at the processes of economical socialization against capitalist productivity as the key factor in creating socialism inside now-imperialist countries. To accomplish this, the movement of the political left and socialist forces should not concentrate on simple fight for higher salaries.

Kształtowanie się marksowskiej koncepcji państwa

Author(s): Grzegorz Wyczyński / Language(s): Issue: 32/2014

In this article I tried to analyze the early texts of Karl Marx to abstract from them his views on the state. The question, that interested me, was: is there a theory of the state in early Marx's writings and - if there is - what is it's relationship to the standpoint articulated in his subsequent texts? In the mature thought of Karl Marx the state was understood as a tool of class violence - an institution in the superstructure which primary function is reproduction of a social class structure and its economical infrastructure. But in some early works of this author we won't find such a definitions. I tried to show then, how Marx's understanding of the state have changed during his early period.

Problem obiektywności w naukach społecznych

Author(s): Walery Gubin,Swietłana Konaczewa / Language(s): Issue: 32/2014

This article presents a complex problem of the subjective nature of knowledge and its objective dimension. The authors use the dialectical category form transformed (Marx) and understanding of ideology in the works of K. Mannheim. Knowledge, as well as the contemporary world walking up from this perspective as close to Z. Bauman's idea of liquid modernity.

Możliwości sformułowania ścisłej idei laickości w warunkach globalizacji: laickość i globalizacja. (Część 2)

Author(s): André Tosel / Language(s): Issue: 32/2014

not available

Koncepcje wyzysku

Author(s): Jacek Tittenbrun / Language(s): Issue: 32/2014

The essay deals with the issue of contemporary Marxist notions of exploitation, using Monika Abucewicz's recent book as a point of reference. It is indeed the case, as Abucewicz claims, that there are in the Marxist camp two distinct approaches to the issue of exploitation, which could be roughly rendered as a political and economic theory of exploitation, respectively. It should be kept in mind, however, that Marx himself subscribed definitely to the economic perspective, and what is being dubbed political perspective on exploitation is a much later invention, and-as it is demonstrated in the essay-much less valuable, if not outright misleading. Among other things, the said framework does not respect an inherent to Marx's approach differentiation between the economy and polity, wherein the latter -identified with the state domain-is being conceived as based on the means of public coercion, which both for Marx, Trotsky, and Max Weber or Florian Znaniecky, for that matter, constituted the hallmark of this sphere, distinguishing it from the economic structure.

Jean-Luc Nancy i polityczny wymiar „praxis” świata

Author(s): Błażej Baszczak / Language(s): Issue: 32/2014

This article is an attempt to take a closer look at the political paradigm of Jean-Luc Nancy's thought. First it refers to withdrawing from the total domination of the political that is exemplified by the sentence: "everything is political". More precisely, the French phrase used by Nancy and his colleague Ph. Lacoue-Labarthe, “retrait du politique” means withdrawing from the "political as such". Through this it becomes possible to re-define or re-thinking the political by incessantly call in question of its essence. It requires a political gesture through and through and it is the only way of putting into question the total domination of determination of the political in terms of foundation, sovereign, principle, authority etc. Secondly the text refers to the two schematic models of Nancy's understanding of politics: that of subject and of citizen and his constant circulation. In this way for Nancy the politics is always in progress, is non-self-sufficiency. Thus the politics underlines the own ethical dimension because it means the struggle for a new world, the struggle for the global injustice. That's why the politics means to create the world every time and it is our ethical demand.

Recenzja: Wokół problemów interpretowania przekazu źródeł numizmatycznych

Author(s): Agata A. Kluczek / Language(s): Issue: 7/2014

Recenzja: Z historii Podkarpacia i Krakowa w końcu XIX i w pierwszej połowie XX wieku

Author(s): Adrian Uljasz / Language(s): Issue: 7/2014

Ku chwale Wiecznego Miasta! Słonie w rzymskich amfiteatrach

Author(s): Katarzyna Daniluk / Language(s): Issue: 7/2014

Roman experiences with elephants in battle, proving that these “ancient tanks” posed a threat to enemies and friendlies alike, which is why — despite the beliefs of Hellenistic strategists — Roman commanders were reluctant to use war elephants. However, these seemingly useless giants (defeated, but also tamed) became a valuable prize for the Romans, as they constituted a spectacular evidence of their victory. The goal of this article is to present the methods elephants were used outside of the battlefield: as a part of triumph ceremonies and — in some measure as their consequence — at the arenas of Roman amphitheaters; furthermore, it aims to analyze antique texts on the character of the giants’ presentation in the Eternal City, especially in the Republic era. The games organized by Pompey in 55 BC were a significant event in the context of this story — the people protested the killing of elephants at the arena, which was an unprecedented occurrence. The later venations with the participation of these animals resembled more their contemporary circus performances.