Hélène Cixous’s Creaturely "Poethics"

Author(s): Marta Segarra / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s and Sarah Kofman’s conception of writing, Anat Pick’s notion of the ‘creaturely’ and Kári Driscoll’s ‘zoopoetics’, this article discusses the relationship between textuality and animality in Hélène Cixous’s work. Cixous’s writing has been described as inscribing the body in the text, which may be considered an ethical engagement; her embodied poetics can thus be called a creaturely poethics. The analysis focuses mostly on Cixous’s latest texts: Les Sans Arche d’Adel Abdessemed (2018), Animal amour (2021) – which deal openly with animals – and her recent fictions on the Shoah, 1938, nuits (2019) and Ruines bien rangées (2020). In them, animality not only traverses human and non human animals, but also beings considered inanimate, such as Osnabrück’s synagogue. Particularly, Ruines bien rangées gives a voice – and, above all, a ‘cry’ – to all beings reduced to silence, and therefore to death, by the Nazis.

Homofaunie: Non-human Tonalities of Listening in Derrida and Cixous

Author(s): Naomi Waltham-Smith / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

In L’animal que donc je suis Jacques Derrida suggests that the question of what would be proper to the animal should ‘change tune’. I read this extraordinary passage, in which Derrida calls for us to lend an ear to an ‘unheard-of music’ that neither emancipates the non-human nor condemns it to inarticulate noise, in conjunction with the nexus of animality, telephony and the cri de la littérature that unfolds in Hélène Cixous’s writing, exploring the significant role assumed by the sonorous in these descriptions of non-human life. For Cixous, the telephonic power of near-instantaneous substitution and of prostheticity is inseparable from the sounds produced by the coterie of animals that populate the writings of these two authors. What is intriguing is that this bestiary is almost always said with a certain homonymy or homophony. Hence this article traces what I dub an ‘homofaunie’ echoing Cixous’s series of puns and neologisms such as ‘(t)elefaun’ and ‘(t)elephantasy’ that capture Derrida’s attention. The article asks what is at stake for theorizing non-human life – not just animal but also plant and so-called inanimate life – if the mode of questioning is to be redirected by a specifically aural attunement in which listening itself is retuned under the guidance of untranslatable homophony.

I Stink, Therefore I Mink: A Manifesto

Author(s): Marie-Dominique Garnier / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

The recent mass culling of mink in Denmark and elsewhere, following the animals’ contamination by a COVID-19 variant, is taken as a re-entry point into Derrida and Lacan’s mink-mediated conversation in The Beast and the Sovereign. Out of the etymological ‘stink’ attached to the mink emerges an animot gifted with (unlimited) ink, with a potential to disturb philosophies of language, to write back or strike back, as it has recently done in the form of alignments of dead yet resurfacing animals. In the wake of Derrida’s verbal disseminations around the vison, and of Lacan’s attribution of a ‘sort of language’ to the animal in The Formations of the Unconscious, this essay follows an animal pack with includes the 17 million mink programmed for (double) extinction by inhumation and cremation. A hauntology follows, adumbrated by Lacan’s interest in the ‘secretion’ of fur, mink oil and (psychoanalytic) sense, and by Derrida’s encounter with the neoliberal, crypto-vison Alain Minc in 1994.

Bugging: The Kaleidoscopic Literary Politics of Insects

Author(s): Nina Seiler / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

This article analyses the appearance of insects in Polish literature of the mid-socialist period. It will elaborate a post-humanist perspective on the peaking presence of flies, wasps, bugs or worms in literary texts both as a motif and as an aesthetic strategy. The article investigates the way the deployment of insects in and through the text modulates the view of and the perspective on their human fellows, and how these modulations can be traced to the social reality of the socialist 1960s and 1970s.

Book Review: Democracy and Truth a Short History by Sophia Rosenfeld

Author(s): Sakina Shakil Gröppmaier / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Review of: Sakina Shakil Gröppmaier - Democracy and Truth a Short History by Sophia Rosenfeld, 2018.

Емил Дюркем и за необходимостта от нравствено възпитание в обществото

Author(s): Nikolay Mihaylov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2022

The article is devoted to the ideas of the French sociologist and philosopher Emile Durkheim about moral education. Moral education means special care for students, which is also care for the whole society. The influence of individualism as main moral principle of contemporary society is also analyzed. The author traces connections of Durkheim's ideas with the concepts of other thinkers and considers their contemporary influence on the education system. He also argues on the analysis of Durkheim's ideas, the necessity of education and training in ethics in the modern educational process.

Философията на модернизма в архитектурата на БАУХАУС

Author(s): Iskra Dandolova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2022

After 1989, the construction of industrially built residential blocks in residential complexes in Sofia was stopped. Until then, for two or three decades, they were the most important production for the construction of residential buildings in the capital according to the principles of modernism. Thousands of homeless people eagerly awaited them to be sheltered. Confusion ensued after the political changes in 1989, when attempts were made to implement the laws on the restitution of agricultural land within the complexes, despite the fact that these were “projects with implementation” and according to the Restitution Law no changes could be made there. The complexes, as well as the other constructions in progress, only had to be completed according to their designs. But it did not happen. In many places, “illegal restitution” of private agricultural land has begun, as well as spontaneous “privatization” of municipal and state lands and new construction in violation of the projects for the development of residential complexes. Their physical and social environment has changed radically and as a result the quality of life in them has deteriorated sharply. Thirty years after 1989, the residential complexes of Sofia have dramatically moved away from the principles of modernism and are almost everywhere in spatial and social degradation. An intensive process of anti-modernism is under way. Only recently the Sofia Municipality decided to introduce a policy to improve the living conditions of citizens in these territories – will it be able to realize and develop it and is it not too late?

Медицината и въпросът за бъдещето

Author(s): Iveta Tasheva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2022

The text discusses one of the many applications of medical translation, namely its ability to translate knowledge. In this sense, it is directly related to the theme of the future and development of transhumanism. This particular article discusses some of the mainstays of transhumanism that affect medicine - the idea of genetic enhancement and the technologically determined evolution of individuals, futurological utopias and anti-utopias, and debates surrounding immortality.

„Tako rzecze Zaratustra” Wacława Berenta: młodopolska maniera czy nowatorski eksperyment?

Author(s): Katarzyna Lukas / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2021

The paper deals with the Polish translation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra made by the Polish writer Wacław Berent (1905). The translation is considered in the context of its epoch (“Young Poland”) and of Berent’s own literary work. The analysis aims at distinguishing the most important stylistic features of the translation: poetic devices typical of Young Poland, such as archaisms, neologisms, and reinforcement of the original’s audial qualities. Despite being criticized as “mannerist”, Berent’s translation appears as an innovative example of modernist translation, consistent with the symbolist model of translation.

The Image of the Other in the Cultural Practices of the Modernity

Author(s): Serhii Vytkalov,Lesia Smyrna,Iryna Petrova,Adriana Skoryk,Olena Mykolayivna Goncharova / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

The cultural diversity and the culture of plural coexistence becomes the global problem of existence. Mutual penetration and leveling of the boundary having divided the world into Other and Own is relevant, as it challenges identity in the conditions of openness and unification. Own culture is able to reveal its potential and present its essential features and original character only in the context of a different cultural dimension. The complex intertwinings, connections, influences of the cultures of different peoples and their worldviews in a single world cultural space are illuminated by the dialogue. Dialogue determines the nourishing interaction, which allows to get richer by knowing the unique, valuable experience of the Other, to expand the horizons of one’s own existence. The atmosphere created by the dialogue is marked by humanism, implies the dignity and the right of each participant to argue their own point of view, therefore, to use their own intellectual abilities, knowledge and values.

Ricoeur and Foucault on Tragedy and Truth

Author(s): Carlos Garduño Comparán / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

The purpose of this text is to confront some Paul Ricoeur’s and Michel Foucault’s significant reflections on Greek tragedy, in order to discuss their interpretation of its truth and the knowledge it makes possible. Ricoeur supposes that tragedy implies a theology that, though it is not explicitly developed, points to the knowledge of the self, his conflicts with others, and even to a possible redemption. For his part, Foucault determines that in tragedies a set of discourses opposing against each other is at stake, without the possibility of overcoming their conflict in a higher knowledge. Does tragedy allows knowledge through the spectacle and the emotions aroused? Is the truth of tragedy manifested in the confrontation and intensification of passions, but cannot be developed as knowledge of the self and his reconciliation with others?

Аналитика на афицируемостта: около проблема за феноменологическото несъзнавано

Author(s): Denitsa Nencheva,Desislav Georgiev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2022

The problem of the relationship between consciousness and unconsciousness has proved to be not only a neuralgic point in the interdisciplinary debates throughout the 20th century, but one which maintains its notable place in the present day. Taking the long and complex history of the encounters between Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis and Edmund Husserl's mature phenomenology as a theoretical background, the present paper offers a novel approach towards the consciousness/unconsciousness problem, situated within the peculiar sphere shaped by the dialogue between Freudian and Husserlian notions. What we offer is a preliminary sketch for an analytics of affectability that opens a path toward reexamining some key psychoanalytical concepts such as unconscious, repression and memory which can be a valuable contribution to the development of phenomenological conceptualizations of different forms of traumatic experience.

The Choice of Love and the Numinous: Existential and Gender Contexts

Author(s): Nazip Khamitov,Svitlana Krylova,Olena Romanova / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

The authors of the article analyze the influence of the numinous as an existential state and the structure of the unconscious, which causes sacred amazement and fear in a person on the choice of love in its gender-based manifestations. On the basis of the methodological strategy of metaanthropology, the choice of love is conceptualized in the ordinary, the ultimate and the transcendent existential dimensions of human being, which correspond to the ordinary, the personal and the philosophical worldview. In the methodological coordinates of C. Jung's psychoanalysis, the manifestations of the numinous in the archetypes of Anima and Animus and their influence on the decisive manifestation of love in the life of a man and a woman during the formation of a worldview are investigated. The actualization of the philosophical worldview, in which there is a free maturation of ideals, values, the destruction of outdated worldview attitudes and the establishment of a new being, leads to the integrity of the personality and the unity of individuals in love and co-creation. Under the influence of this, the emphasis in the numinous changes from horrible to sacred. This leads to worldview freedom in the choice of love, which becomes truly humanistic and constructive.

Еврейските мотиви в „Сказание за буквите“ на Константин Костенечки – културни и интерпретационни проблеми

Author(s): Hristo Saldzhiev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2022

The present article deals with the translations of Hebrew and non Hebrew but presented as Hebrew anthroponyms and oikonyms in the work of Konstantin Konstenechki “Treatise of Letters” dating back to the first decade of the 15th century. Up to this moment excluding Jagić the researchers have not pay significant attention to this part of work and according to common opinion Konstantin did not know Hebrew language. However the careful language and textological analysis indicates that a big part of the translations of names and words loaned from the Old and New Testaments are identical or stay close to the etymologies including in the modern dictionaries and other are result of phonetic comparison to Aramaic. There are also translations influenced by Midrashes and the works of Philo of Alexandria.

The Journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, from the Baptism to becoming the Son of God and from the Earthly to the Heavenly Kingdom from the Point of View of Allegorical Interpretation

Author(s): Eva Kovacheva / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

The article discusses two historical events taken from texts from the Holy Scripture – the Old and the New Testaments, and a spiritual view on human soul, as found in the Holy tradition of the Orthodox church: they support the thesis that, according to the method of allegorical interpretation, the three evidences point to three inner stages through which human soul passes in its transition to a holistic spiritual development: from the act of the Holy Baptism to the entry into the Kingdom of God.

За естетическите ценности в контекста на интегралния подход у Радослав Цанов

Author(s): Tatyana Batuleva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2022

The text analyzes the role of aesthetic experience for Radoslav Tsanoff, an American philosopher of Bulgarian origin. The article is structured in the following directions: creativity and innovation in science and art (differences and analogies); art and culture as part of a new scale of values; aesthetic experience as participation in the perspective of the theory of shared values; role and importance of culture (spirit of cosmic scale and depth). The conclusion is that these are in harmony with the general direction in his work, including the need for an integral approach and a new scale of values.

Етическият аспект на цвета като мода: XIV–XVI век

Author(s): Vyara Popova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2022

The article traces the transformation of black color in clothing as a sign of high ethical standards. And fashion itself began to operate as an axiological and ideological form, expressing and setting certain values. Thus, clothing as a color, on the one hand, becomes a sign of public indication and recognition, and on the other – an instrument of social segregation.

По повод на Ницше

Author(s): Plamen Antov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2022

This text is part of a book with fragments to be published. The fragments touch on the figure of Nietzsche, although in a casual, relatively free way, and are mainly selected to characterize “his” themes or biographical plots (including the fragmentary metanarrative itself).

Женското: актуален фокус на изследване

Author(s): Ivanka Stapova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2022

Един документ, свидетелстващ за християнската етика и обществената ангажираност на българите в Oтечеството и в емиграция (Румъния) през 60-те години на XIX век

Author(s): Ivaylo Naydenov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2021

The proposed article pays attention to a document that provides valuable information in two directions. The first one is related to the Christian moral norms typical for the period of the Bulgarian National Revival. The second direction is related to the public self-organization and charity. The mentioned document is a letter (from 1860) sent by the notables of Tarnovo to their fellow countrymen in Ottoman Bulgaria, and in Romania (Bucharest) in order to help financially and morally their fellow-citizen Mihail Vasilev. He was a guild member (a furrier) and a merchant who became very poor in 1860. Probably the reasons for his pauperization were related to the specific economic and financial situation in the Ottoman Empire after the Crimean War (1853–1856). The negative factors caused by the war forced Mihail to leave the urban setting, and settle down in Romania. It is interesting to note that the spirit of Christian ethical norms (goodness, charity, compassion) influences the content of the whole document. The notables of Tarnovo urged their compatriots in the Bulgarian lands, and in Romania to help the needy and his family (a wife and five daughters). There are also some clues about merchants, their profession and wealth; the role of basic moral principles such as honesty. Last but not least, the discussed primary source can give the opportunity to assess the importance of self-organization of Bulgarians to help each other. Their social capital (social/entrepreneurial networks and contacts based on mutual trust) played an important role in such philanthropic activities.