‘Gezi Spirit’: Narrative Fragments and Modes of Articulation. Ethnography of Post-Protest (Istanbul 2013–2015)

Author(s): Zornitza Draganova / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

This text is based on an ethnographic study on the protests and civic initiatives that initially took place in 2013 but then continued with varying intensity throughout the following years. While applying the method of participant observation during the Gazi events’ and conducting interviews with individuals who had taken part in the protests, a main goal of this study is to grasp the transformation in the identification, articulation and presentation of important and secondary topics and problems that had been brought forward throughout the public discussions. The initial motivation of this study is the idea that after the first demonstrations and clashes, the interpretation of the political projects’ turbulence, of the reinvention of urban spaces, of the success or failure of diverse protest and resistance practices, gradually modifies the way the aforementioned events and ongoing processes are being thought and talked about. The research questions the respondents’ participation in protests, the constitution and disintegration of communities, the ‘diagnosis’, ‘prognosis’ and ‘rationale’ elements in respondents’ and informants’ micro-discourses and their acts in relation to diverse initiatives. The text attempts to systematize the observation data and the collected ‘narrative fragments’ within four ‘modes of articulation’: transformative, subjective, argumentative, and topological.

‘The International of the Conquered’– The Promethean Movement and Polish Authorities during 1926 – 1939

Author(s): Paweł Libera / Language(s): English Issue: 6/2018

“Prometheanism” meant the political cooperation of interwar Poland with non-Russian peoples and nations in Russia directed against the tsarist, and later the Soviet empire. The Promethean movement included representatives of Ukraine (Ukrainian People’s Republic – UNR), Caucasus (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Mountaineers of the Northern Caucasus), Crimean and Volga Tatars, Turkestan and nations inhabiting Finland (Ingria, Komi, Karelia), as well as a part of the Don, Kuban and Terek Cossacks. This article focuses on the relations between the Polish side and individual nations and structures of the Promethean front, on those turning moments in its development, as well as on the political and organisational evolution of the Promethean movement.

“AN HESITATING JOURNEY THROUGH FOREIGN KNOWLEDGE”: NICULESCU, THE OSTRICH, AND CULTURE HISTORY

Author(s): Florin Curta / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2014

In a recent article, Gh. A. Niculescu raises the question of the relation between culture-historical archaeology and the so-called “production of knowledge” on ethnic phenomena. He targets the works of Volker Bierbrauer, Sebastian Brather, and Florin Curta. At a closer examination, however, Niculescu’s paper is based on a distorted understanding of what culture history actually is, and on wrong assumptions about such fundamental concepts as ethnicity or (material culture) style. Besides flaws in this line of thinking, his paper reveals Niculescu’s dishonest citation practices, his efforts to create a straw man, and his weak credentials for assuming any critical position in terms of the “production” of archaeological literature in the culture-historical mode. Beyond rhetorical tricks and smearing tactics, Niculescu does not in fact advance any solution to the problem, and remains ambiguous, if not altogether confused about the role of “social sciences” in the archaeology of (medieval) ethnicity.

“East” and “West” in the Second Half of the 19th Century-between the Need for Models and the Establishment of a Romanian National System

Author(s): Florin Nacu / Language(s): English Issue: 56/2017

Undoubtedly, the two concepts, which are usually attributed to the second half of the 20th century, from the desire to show the differences of culture, civilisation, political concept in Europe, can be studied, through translation, a century earlier, that is in the second half of the 19th century. During this historical era, there was carried out a significant political fight, between the necessity to follow certain models, and that of creating a governing and administration system, original and representative for the Romanian state and the Romanian nation.

“GREATˮ BULGARIA – METAPHOR OR (POSSIBLE) REALITY, Macedonian review, 2, 2016

Author(s): Nikolay Poppetrov,Nikolay Poppetrov / Language(s): English Issue: Special/2019

What is the concept of “Great Bulgariaˮ? Another metaphor, which politicians and publicists handle; concept to mobilize public opinion on various political purposes, outside of the borrowed or at least prevalent in external model (Greater German Reich) or felicitous term, behind which a never expressed but possible geopolitical project hides? Let us try to reconstruct the story.

“IT WAS A PLEASING REFLECTION TO SEE THE WORLD SO PRETTILY CHEQUER’D”: AESTHETICS OF URBAN EXPERIENCE IN THE SPECTATOR

Author(s): Eduard Ghiṭă / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

Joseph Addison’s 1712 collection of papers on the Pleasures of theImagination has been read extensively as a founding statement of modern aesthetics.The great majority of studies take Addison’s essays on the Pleasures of theImagination to be a self-contained document which prevents their authors fromturning their attention to The Spectator at large. As I turn my attention to theperiodical at large, my aim in this paper is to show how the urban experience of Mr.Spectator was consequential in the emergence of a modern aesthetic discourse. First,I will present the views of Donald Newman, Martha Woodmansee, John Brewer andWilhelm Dilthey, in order to support the view that the city could be envisaged asa condition for the aesthetic. This lends itself to extra-textual approaches to theperiodical, tracing the importance of the social, political and economic contextsfor the rise of aesthetics. A short introduction to the scope of aesthetics outsideof art will help me recuperate the aesthetic dimension of Mr. Spectator’sreflections on his urban environment. I will then start my analysis of the city as asource of the aesthetic. I argue that the locus of aesthetic theory, Addison’s essays onthe Pleasures of the Imagination, needs to be enlarged so as to accommodate Mr.Spectator’s reflections on the city. Tracing back the findings in The Spectator at largeto the imagination papers, I show how the metropolis offered Mr. Spectator animmediate space where his two most important aesthetic categories —the new andthe great—would be played out.

“Ligji i shenjtë i partisë”Ateizmi dhe politika ndaj fesë në Shqipërinë komuniste

Author(s): Egin Ceka / Language(s): Albanian Issue: 32-33/2014

Artikulli në vijim është një paraqitje e përgjithshme e marrëdhënieve të shtetit me fenë në Shqipërinë komuniste në periudhën 1944 deri 1990, i shtrirjes graduale të kontrollit shtetëror dhe më pas i ndalimin dhe kriminalizimit të jetës fetare në sferën publike dhe private. Fokusi i tij përqendrohet tek politikat shtetërore dhe të drejtuesve tij të lartë si aktorët dominantë të kësaj marrëdhënieje. Çështjet që ngrihen kanë të bëjnë, ndër të tjera, me funksionin legjitimues për pushtetin të ndalimit të fesë dhe të zëvendësimit të saj me ateizmin shtetëror, perceptimin e ateizmit si një ideologji zëvendësuese për vakumin e krijuar nga ndalimi i fesë, rolin e intelektualëve si përçues të ateizmit në shoqëri, por edhe mbijetesën e fenomeneve dhe besimeve fetare deri në rënien e sistemit socialist. Pa pretenduar se çështjet dhe përgjigjet e ofruara e shterin problematikën e shtruar, ky shkrim, nëpërmjet analizës së motiveve dhe të interesave politike të veprimit, të përcaktimit të vlerave dhe të mënyrës së komunikimit të tyre në publik, synon të hedhë dritë mbi një kapitull akoma të pandriçuar mjaftueshëm të historisë bashkëkohore shqiptare.

“TEMPORAL MODERNIZATION” IN THE OTTOMAN PRE-TANZIMAT CONTEXT

Author(s): Marinos Sariyannis / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

Studies on the perception of time, leisure and timekeeping in the Ottoman Empire have focused in the Tanzimat period, as the main paradigm is the development of such attitudes and practices during the rise of capitalist economy in Europe, now identified with the rise of “modernity”. The paper questions the use of “early modernity” as an interpretational tool and tries to assess developments and transformations in these perceptions during the earlier Ottoman history, in order to locate established mentalities and their changes. For this aim, different sources are analyzed, including diaries, chronicles and travel accounts in Ottoman Turkish and Greek. It is shown that, while there is a strong tendency for the use of temporal precision in various fields of everyday life and of state institutions throughout the eighteenth century, the use of clocks in labor appeared with a considerable delay, in the second half of the nineteenth century.

“THE MAZE FACTOR” VS. “THE SOLAR EYE”: IDENTITIES OF WALKERS AND WATCHERS

Author(s): Marija Spirkovska / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

This paper will aim to investigate Joyce’s Ulysses, the paradigmatic urbannovel, in juxtaposition with Huxley’s dystopian Brave New World and AlasdairGray’s ambiguous Lanark on the theoretical basis of modern urban planning,environmental psychology, and De Certeau’s analyses of modern urban living. It willcompare the contrasting perspectives of the city as a fragmenting labyrinth andintegrative panorama. The analysis telescopes on the denizens’ roles of walkers andspectators, with particular attention on cognitive mapping as vital for spatiotemporalorientation. Therefore, as the wanderings of Stephen, Bloom, and Duncan Thawdemonstrate, the practice of everyday walking in the city and the trajectory walkedare inextricably linked to the character’s inner quest for self-identity. The city mazeis as confounding as the puzzles of one’s subjective existence. Conversely, Huxley’scharacters’ panoptic vision of post-Fordian London fits an urban planner’s dream ofobjectivity, linearity, and totalitarian order where walking, I would argue, amountsto a productive anarchy against the imprisonment of individuality. Ultimately, theoptimism of Joyce and Gray testifies that the peripatetic city view, althoughdisordered, allows a dynamic inscription of subjective meanings on the materialreality, thus prevailing over any attempt to curtail its heterodoxy into a static onedimensionality.

“Verily, This Is the Sheepfold of that Good Shepherd”: The Idea of the “True” Church in Sixteenth-Century Polish Catechisms

Author(s): Waldemar Kowalski / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2016

The article discusses how the authors of sixteenth-century Polish Catholic and Evangelical catechisms perceived and analysed the notion of “the Church”. Following the Tridentine programme, the Catholic authors present their Church as unified under the Pope’s authority and the only inheritor of the works of the Apostles. The veracity of its teaching is testified to with God’s unnatural interventions – miracles. Protestant theologians teach about “the visible and outward Church”, which exists whenever the pure Word of God is preached and where sacraments are administered in accordance with the Holy Writ. Alongside the Visible Church, there exists “the invisible and inward Church” that unites all those following Christ, who is the one and only head of the Church.

„[...] Едно пътуване [...], което не бе завръщане“ За структурата на паметта в „Гласовете от Маракеш“ (1967) на Елиас Канети

Author(s): Matjaž Birk / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2018

Die Stimmen von Marrakesch (1967) is one of the characteristic texts produced by Bulgarian-born Austrian writer and Nobel prize winner Elias Canetti. On the one hand, his Aufzeichnungen nach einer Reise (A Record of a Visit) lays the foundations of the aphoristic style of his multi-volume “records”, and, on the other hand, is imbedded in the European tradition of travel writing as a genre dedicated to memoir culture. The paper traces the rhetoric of memory as a narrative principle, unifying the impressions of the traveller as a by-standing observer of the real journey, his reflections on the stories further developed in his imagination and his rhetorical devices for the articulation of universal human ideas.

„A 48-as szomorú élet bekövetkezéséről”

Egy mezővárosi kisnemes emlékei a szabadságharcról

Author(s): Tamás Dobszay / Language(s): Hungarian Publication Year: 0

„A székelyek múltjának marxista feltárásáért”

Programadó írások a szocializmus időszakából

Author(s): Noémi Zsuzsanna Both / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: V/2018

The work of István Imreh (1919, Sâncraiu/Sepsiszentkirály – 2003, Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár) about the exploration of the history of the Szeklers is outstanding in a number of ways. We refer to his studies on economic and social history of Szeklerland, his decades long engagement with teaching that resulted in a number of disciples, and also to the programmatic writings aiming at the systematic exploration of Szekler history. In my paper, I undertake to present these latter works. This choice is not an arbitrary one. Although, a number of István Imreh’s contemporaries and colleagues (such as Zsigmond Jakó, Ákos Egyed, Elek Csetri, Lajos Demény) had expressed their opinion about the situation of the historiography of the nationalities, I focus on Imreh’s writings about Szekler history as they are unique in their deliberate and consistent nature. Moreover, Imreh’s writings apparently served as reference, too.

„Bielaruskaja Rabotnіtsa i Syalyanka” („Białoruska Robotnica i Chłopka”) i formowanie ideału kobiety sowieckiej w Białoruskiej Socjalistycznej Sowieckiej Republice (1924–1939)

Author(s): Lubou Kozik / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2018

In the BSRR, one of the means of forming socialist awareness in women was the journal "Bielaruskaja rabotnica i sialanka" ["Byelorussian Worker and Peasant"], which was established in 1924 (since autumn 1931 "Rabotnica and Kałhasnica Bielarusi" ["Robotnica i Kolchoźniczka Belarus "]). The task of the editorial office - Women's Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Poland (b) B - was to spread the influence of the Communist Party on the broad layers of women in the workers 'and peasants' milieu and raise their cultural and political level by translating them to tasks facing the Soviet party and power. The shaping of the ideal of a Soviet woman in the pages of the journal "Belarusian Workers and Workers" / "Robotnica and Koloshnik of Belarus" took place mainly as part of a program on the social activity of the party. The aim was to change the status and role of women in the family and its involvement in the implementation of the party's tasks in the political, economic, social and cultural fields.

„Defilada niemieckich katolików”. Walne zgromadzenia Verband deutscher Katholiken in Polen w województwie śląskim 1925-1938

Author(s): Sebastian Rosenbaum / Language(s): Polish Issue: 81/2017

After the revolution of 1848 a tradition developed in German Catholicism to organise the so-called Catholics’ Days (Katholikentag), i.e. meetings of the representatives of Catholic organisations to debate on the issues crucial for the Church, the Catholic laity and the society. Tis tradition took roots in the Diocese of Wrocław as well, becoming a vital element of the Catholics’ self-organisation and their creation of a coherent cultural environment. After the division of the Upper Silesia region in 1922 the leading organisation of German Catholics in Silesia voivodeship – the Association of German Catholics in Poland (Verband deutscher Katholiken in Polen, VdK), seated in Katowice, referred to the tradition of the Catholics’ Days. The general meetings of VdK, which took place in the years 1925–1938, became fora for the presentation of the German Catholicism in Poland, and simultaneously public events of remarkable importance for the German minority in the Republic of Poland. During the general meetings of VdK prominent speakers from Germany and leading representatives of German Catholics in Poland took the floor. Some of the general meetings took place in Silesian voivodeship – mainly in Katowice and once in Królewska Huta (Chorzów). The events, which usually lasted several days, comprised of the internal part, during which the association authorities were elected, and the public part, which included German minority choir and music band performances, as well as speakers’ lectures. The events were accompanied with press reports, lecture reprints, brochures with lecture texts and other materials referring to the subject matter.

„Figyeljetek és jól átkozzatok" - A Galilei Kör „antimilitarista" tevékenysége az első világháború alatt (1914-1918)

Author(s): Péter Csunderlik / Language(s): Hungarian Publication Year: 0

The study presents the activity of the Galilei Circle duringt the First World War. The circle was a student association created in 1908. It was a radical left answer to the National Christian provocations in the framework of the Kulturkampf in the Hungarian universities. During the Great War the circle organized antimilitarist demonstrations, the activists took conferences. In March 1919 the Galilei Circl ceased to existe as organisation, but the activists took part in the short lived Hungarian Soviet Republic.

Ὁ καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθὸς ἄνθρωπος L’HONNÊTE HOMME DANS LES MIROIRS DES PRINCES BYZANTINS

Author(s): Simona Nicolae / Language(s): French Issue: 4/2018

This research aims at drawing out the portrait of the Byzantine emperor, as a character in the mirror of princes. The analysis shows that the humanness and the morality of the basileus are more and more important throughout the history of the Empire, to the detriment of his political dimension. The image of the emperor is highlighted by two effigies which overlap: one of them is diverse and brings together various qualities, the other is a sketch of the man simply beautiful and good, stripped of any particular trait, like the ideal of the classical Athens. We have explored the semantic areas which designate the qualities recommended to the prince (concerning the physical lineaments, the mind, the soul and the religiousness). We have also examined the monochrome portrait, which unfolds a human archetype with a “quantitative” side (defined by the notion of μέγεθος) and a “qualitative” one expressed by adjectival structures such as πλαττόμενος, τελειός). An extremely simple lexical formula, καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός, crowns the image being analysed. The emperor must be, after all, the wise or rather honest man, with no degree of comparison, with no useless determiner, morally beautiful and good in the aesthetic vision of the Antiquity, for which morals and aesthetics were never dissociated.

Яворов - апостол на Македония

Author(s): Milkana Boshnakova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2011

The author traces the process of commitment of the young poet Peyo Yavorov to the Macedonian Bulgarians liberation cause. This process is inseparable from his poetic development - the theme of the liberation of Macedonia became a leading one in the beginning of Yavorov's creative path.

Ян Карски – герой на полската съпротива

Author(s): Andrzej Żbikowski / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 6/2016

Яне Сандански: в сянката на македонизма или посмъртната драма на един български национален революционер

Author(s): Slavi Slavov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2009

In the course of several decades - from the establishing of Vardar Macedo­nia as a federative unit within the borders of Tito's Jugoslavia in the 40s of the XX с to present days - the personality and the activity of the voivode from the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization Yane Sandansky have been the object of historical falsifications and open political speculations concerning his natio­nality.