Kultura liberalna wobec wyzwań współczesności
Debates / Debaty: Prof. Piotr Bartula, Prof. Andrzej Szahaj and Prof. Janusz Majcherek.
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Debates / Debaty: Prof. Piotr Bartula, Prof. Andrzej Szahaj and Prof. Janusz Majcherek.
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In this article we will identify and develop some aspects regarding the magical objects, found in the fantastic folk fairy tale Petrea Voinicul and Ileana Cosânțana. The text is part of the volume Romanian Folk Stories and Poems, published in 1971, Bucharest. The volume includes both folk material from the props of the popular epic, prose and popular lyricism, collected by I. G. Sbiera, from the Bukovina area. In general, folk tales show us the journey of a hero, usually the positive character, on a mission, more or less complex. The supporting text, which we choose for a mythological and symbolic discussion, includes a series of elements that are the subject of our research.
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Our approach includes, on the one hand, the meeting point of customs in the cross-border area of the Danube and, on the other hand, it aims at the common points and the differences that they imply. The cross-border region of the Danube in the Bulgarian region, the holidays over the year have certain corresponding elements in the existing customs and traditions and in the Romanian cross-border space. There are not so many written references about the folklore of this area, which is at the center of research in this area. They were reduced after the 40s of the 20th century, after the establishment of communism. "After a hiatus of several decades, only since the seventh decade have several anthologies of prose and popular Aromanian poetry been published," as Iulia Wisoşenschi states.
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At the beginning of the 15th century, Castile, like other countries located on the Iberian Peninsula, was struggling with a range of internal problems. Before it reached – together with Aragon – greatness as the Monarchy of the Catholic Kings, it had already taken an active interest in far-away lands, and its representatives made distant journeys, which they described in detail in their travel accounts. Over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, Spain became a great power both externally and internally, and this period is often called the Golden Ages (siglos de oro) of Spanish literature. This was undoubtedly the period in which literature written on the Iberian Peninsula itself reached its highest level of excellence. Moreover, some literary genres, especially historiography and accounts of travels, conquests, and discoveries, became a tool of Charles V’s and Philip II’s official propaganda: they glorified their empire and passed on the message of Spain’s special role in the world and the greatness of its discoveries and conquests. Against this background, the article discusses the role and history of the publication of two fifteenth-century Castilian travel accounts, or libros de viajes, which report the expeditions of Ruy González de Clavijo and Pero Tafur. Their narratives were key elements of the image Spanish rulers crafted for themselves during both the Habsburg dynasty of the 16th and 17th centuries and the Bourbon dynasty of the 19th century.
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The folk song titled “Besa - Besë” was initially a lyrical song titled “Lulja me erë/Fragrant flower” and was composed by a prominent Albanian ethnomusicologist R. Sokoli from Shkodra during 1940s. This song is recently most recognizable as a song marking Kosovo Football Representation and their fans named “Dardans”. The path from being a love song to a song representing Kosovo Football Club is quite complex as is the history of Kosovo Albanian People. Therefore, in the first part of this paper, which is mainly based on the work of Kosovo ethnomusicologist Rexhep Munishi, as well as other historical books related to Kosovo, is explored how Kosovo Albanian audience has used and transformed the text of this once lyrical love song in different historical contexts relevant for their national awareness and mobilization, including the context of sports and “Plisa”, i. e. fans of Football Club Prishtina. In addition to this the second part of the paper is focuse again on the song Besa Besa but now mainly used in the context of sports, identification and nationalism. This way in these two parts are juxtaposed different theoretical standpoints on nation research; in the first one events could be explained as essentialist and ethno-national (Anthony D. Smith) based interpretations of national awareness, while in the second part will come to prominence constructivist (Benedict Anderson) interpretation of national building as well as new “cognitive turn” in nation research (Rogers Brubaker) in which is also included a sub-national concept (Michael Billig). So, by trying to explore and find out: What are the changes in the song? What are the contexts in which it is used? How was it used by different artists/singers? How is it used interchangeably by rivalling fans? What is the role of media and advertising? How and when national and sub-national connotations are intertwined?, is facilitated better nderstanding of this song’s fluidity over time.
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Historical scholarship, as well as other sciences concerned with illuminating the human past, usually devotes its attention to written sources and neglects other types of sources, such as narratives or memoirs, oral, photographic, etc., wrongly considering them to carry less data and thus to be less valuable for study. However, photographs, either as material within an archival fund or as part of a special collection of photographs held by private owners or collectors or in archives, represent important documentary assets for identifying and illuminating the cultural heritage of a community or country, and as such are a valuable source for research in the field of history in general and ethnography in particular. The Archive of Kosovo has a rich collection of photographs of personalities, events, monuments and various objects, neighbourhoods, bazaars, houses, streets, crafts and artisans of the time, which provide us with important data for research and studies in the field of cultural heritage in general. Considering this fact, in our article we will treat and consider those photographs from the collection of Kosovo Archive that provide us with information and help us in further research in the above mentioned areas.
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The article discusses regulations concerning the crimes of killing and abusing animals in the Polish legal system. The provisions of the Regulation of the President of the Republic of Poland of March 22, 1928 and the Act on the Protection of Animals of August 21, 1997 are analyzed. The following topics are discussed: the history of the provisions on crimes against animals, the subject of protection of the provisions of the Act on the Protection of Animals, along with considerations regarding the subjectivity of animals. The subject-matter of crimes that fall within this category is also considered, i.e., a description of the premises which make it possible to classify a given act as a crime. The subject of prohibited acts as well as the subjective side in the form of the perpetrator’s motivation are analyzed as well.
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The text is a review of Aleksandra Ubertowska’s book, Historie biotyczne. Pomiędzy estetyką a geotraumą [Biotic histories. Between aesthetics and geotrauma]. The starting point becomes the biocentric lens applied by the researcher and the geo-story behind it. Equally interesting and important are the possibilities of ecocritical theories in interpretation and their application in the Polish ground.
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After Nigeria became independent in 1960, the divisions engendered by the long history of colonialism as well as the artificiality of borders imposed by the British led to a three-year civil war following the Igbo-led military coup in 1966. In her novel Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie depicts the events leading to the Biafran war and the horrors of the "war of starvation" through a polyphony of voices from different social backgrounds as well as through a metatext, a book called The World Was Silent When We Died, excerpts from which are inserted at the end of certain chapters as a comment on colonial and postcolonial politics. Thus, the novel turns into a large-scale historiographic metafiction that documents the transition from the early postcolonial state to what philosopher and political theorist Achille Mbembe called “necropolitical” systems of domination.
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In this contribution I apply the semiotic method of Juri Lotman to a specific physical location – a significant Bulgarian religious monastery, in order to elucidate the Bulgarian metahistorical tradition. Any process of communication with a religious text involves a complex relationship with the reader. A readership image hidden in the Bulgarian religious text has played a central role for many generations; therefore, in addition to analysing a physical location, the method of communication in the area of “cultural centrality” has also been examined. The discussion focuses on a specific metahistorical text, the Testament of John of Rila, and the ways in which it interacts with important geographical and cultural areas and their hidden dimensions of “semiotic spheres”. The Testament is a part of Bulgarian cultural legacy and its role in the area of the “extra-cultural” and “cultural periphery” is remarkable.
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This paper considers the topic of sacred spaces in North America through the vantage offered by Chacoan roads, monumental avenues constructed by Ancestral Four Corners people of the US Southwest from ca. AD 850–1200. I begin with a critique of the concept of the “sacred” as applied to the Chacoan past, suggesting instead that the Indigenous North American concept of power (in the sense of potent, generative force infused throughout the environment) offers a more culturally relevant framing. Next, I present three examples of locations along Chacoan roads that I argue were recognized as places of power due to the inherent landscape affordances of these locales. I close by briefly describing some of the practices carried out along Chacoan roads and drawing a connection between the understanding of “sacredness” evidenced through the archaeology of Chacoan roads and contemporary Native American activist efforts to protect landscapes of great power and meaning.
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The term “ancient Indian burial ground” holds bifurcated meaning for Indigenous and mainstream populations. What one group may respect as sacred ground where their ancestors rest, another sees the mystical –and frequently evil– site of forces beyond their knowledge influenced by an ethnic Other. This paper explores this dual labeling of North American Indigenous burial sites through media by looking at representations of Mi’gmaq burial gravesites. In director Jeff Barnaby’s 2013 Rhymes for Young Ghouls, main character Aila (Devery Jacobs) confronts two burial sites that turn the mainstream stereotype on its head: that of her mother which situates Indigenous burials in a contemporary context and that of a mass grave of children at her residential school which places malintent on settler colonial practices. The film highlights Indigenous ways of coping with these practices including violence, substance abuse, and art. Dissimilarly, Pet Sematary’s (1989) plot involves no Mi’gmaq representation but follows non-Indigenous Louis (Dale Midkiff) as he interacts with a stereotypical Indian burial ground imbued with evil, unknown magic that leads to the inevitable downfall of his entire family. Both films interestingly include zombies, and they portray Indigenous burial spaces similarly as shot from above and filled with fog. However, their conclusive statements placing the blame behind the horror are vastly different.
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This article addresses verbal means of denoting ALCOHOL in the context of the “mythic space”. Mythic space is regarded as the focal segment of a language worldview, the container of irrational axiomatic data quanta that function as basic categorization operators at different stages of civilization’s development. Primal “nano-myths” are reconstructed via etymological analysis of alcohol-containing beverages’ names in different European languages. The article discusses semantics and linguo-cognitive premises of the language signs denoting alcohol beverages in archaic Germanic worldview and in the presentday English-based pop-cultural worldview. The paper suggests a synthetic interdisciplinary interpretation of linguo-cultural implications of the said semantic and cognitive models.
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The report is written in connection to the language of Bulgarian translation of the drama “Napoleon Bonaparte”, who is performed by Christaki Draganovich and published in Constantinople during 1850. The report exposes important morphological peculiarities of the language of this text. The review shows that Christaki Draganovich contributes to the approval of a series of norms, inherent to the contemporary Bulgarian language.
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There is not much information about Aleksy Athanasius’s life and his works. All that we know by now is that he is from Naousa (Greece) and that he was both working on murals and icons. Some of his works are dated and bare his signature. From the time of 1845–1850 Aleksy Athanasius has lived in the village Gorni Voden (today’s district of Assenovgrad). In 1857 Aleksy Athanasius moves along with his family in Assenovgrad. A big part of his creative period is related to parts of the city that he had lived in and the villages of the Rhodope Mountains. Aleksy Athanasius is one well educated painter, who has mastered the techniques of painting of his time. His works are rich in color and his iconographic schemas can be recognized from their good composition and excellent knowledge of biblical and gospel topic.
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The publication examines the meaning behind the paintings of the Bulgarian symbolist artists from the 1920s, in the context of the Native Art movement. With the advent of Symbolism in the Bulgarian art scene, religious images, which are part of the overall conceptual apparatus of European Symbolism, began to appear more and more often in the works of various artists. Thus, along with the modernized “academic” appearance of the new Bulgarian church art, the images of Christianity enter the modern Bulgarian art, mostly through the symbolist narrative. After the end of the First World War, passed through the tragedy and horror of national catastrophes, the Bulgarian artist turned his attention to the religious image in a deeper way, finding in it both spiritual trust and search for a higher meaning, than everyday life, as well as a foundation of his national identity, of his ancestral memory and essence, inextricably linked to the Orthodox faith. In the decade of the 1920s, the complex way in which secessionist aesthetics and Symbolism merge is particularly clear. Not only in Bulgaria, but also in other countries where the Secession develops, it cultivates and educates a special sensitivity to the spiritual and the legendary. Whether in the religious narrative, or in the ascetic images of the monks, the paintings inspired by the Orthodox faith in the Bulgarian art from the 1920s are most often are recreated by the language of Symbolism. Like the old masters, Bulgarian artists realize that in the philosophical depths of the themes of spirituality and faith, the easiest way to embody specific ideas is through the symbol.
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In 1906, the National Ethnographic Museum was established. Historically, the national museums that existed until September 9, 1944 – archaeological and ethnographic – were transferred to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Thus, from the end of 1948, the Archaeological Institute with a museum and the Ethnographic Institute with a museum were established at the BAS. Since then, the Ethnographic Museum has shared a building with the National Art Gallery, which is part of the former royal palace. Popular and well-known names from the artistic life of the country are represented in his painting collection. At the present time, it is difficult to recreate the initial selection of the collection, as well as to trace the movement of specific works, due to the institutional hiatus created as a result of transfer between galleries.
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The text presents the newly published book by Prof. Anatol Anchev (2022) – content, composition, style, author’s self-assessments.
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