Srednia Europa: Zbilja – Mit – Utopija. Postmodernizam, postkolonijalizam, postkomunizam

Author(s): Nikola Petković / Language(s): Croatian

This project attempts to offer a new theoretical paradigm, one that will allow a re-conceptualization of the literary and cultural histories of the countries of Central Europe—that vaguely defined geopolitical entity, which lies between the traditional hearts of “Eastern” and “Western Europe.” Traditionally, Central Europe has been associated most closely with the successor states to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (disassembled at the end of the First World War), but now the term is re-emerging in reference to the successor states of the Eastern Block located outside of the Russian-language sphere. To define and explore such a theoretical construct, however, requires a set of tests against historical data. For that reason, even before I embark on a more detailed expositions in the chapters which follow, it is important to outline here precisely what kinds of conclusions should and should not be expected of this discussion regarding Central European literatures and cultures. First and foremost, the “Central Europe” under discussion is a region of aggregates. It has neither precise geographic outlines nor a single dominant cultural tradition to which it belongs. Instead, “Central Europe” has always had the status of one of Benedict Anderson’s “imagined communities,” since it has been assumed to exist by both its inhabitants and by outsiders. This assumption has been made on various grounds, each of which play a role in defining its existence. 8 Perhaps the best way to define Central Europe is as a cross-cultural space. It is a region in which the traditions of many ethnic groups meet and blend, producing a culture with a very distinctive everyday life for the middle classes while creating a set of expectations for less dominant groups that could not possibly be met. The cultural life of Austro-Hungary, for example, had several centers at the turn of the century, most notably, Budapest and Vienna, but also including Trieste, Prague, and other smaller cities where various religions and languages crossed paths and adjusted their expectations to each other and to the absent central (and largely German-language) culture of the Habsburg nation. Central European culture and literature that I will be discussing must include literatures written in several languages -- namely, Croatian, Italian, German, and Czech. Yet in including examples of these literatures, I will be writing against the grain of the national traditions in which they usually have been framed. Franz Kafka, for example, has a prominent position within the German-language literary canon as a modernist writer; when he is considered as a Central European, one discovers that the kind of existential crisis in which his characters find themselves are echoed in literatures other than German. Jaroslav Hasek’s Good Soldier Svejk, for example, has an equally surreal journey to the war front by train as that undertaken by the land surveyor K. in Kafka’s The Castle. Both are at the mercy of an unknown and unknowable central authority that has their names inscribed in its record books, but which does not acknowledge their individuality behind their shared existence as recipients of the Austro-Hungarian justice and governance. Both characters are also from the margins of their cultures: K. as a German-speaker in a city that is rejecting German heritage and Svejk as a member of a Slavic nation that has little political power of its own. In many ways, then, the examples cited will shy away from the point of view of specialists in the various national literatures involved. Instead, my treatment of the narratives in question will re-create the trans-national and cross-cultural space in which traditionally recognized works of various national literatures have been produced. 9 The “introduction” is typical of my approach to national traditions. It draws on statements by the modern masters of Slavic and Russian literature today, including Milan Kundera, Tatyana Tolstaya, and Joseph Brodsky; however, I will do violence to their positions within their various national traditions as well as to their individual aesthetic programs. I treat critics themselves in an event which documents the continued existence of Central Europe. Conveniently, such an event really happened at a 1990 conference at Lisbon where a discussion was held about the relationship between political and cultural traditions in an era of massive political trauma. The overriding uncertainty about “what remains” after the purported dissolution of the Soviet block allowed a free discussion about cultural boundaries to emerge: the critics and writers were arguing other issues—if all Slavic culture is Russian culture, if Russian culture is “eastern” or “western,” and if other Slavic cultures are “actually” more like Russian culture or influenced by other cultural spheres. In the rest of the introduction, then, I treat these authors as part of an event in which the existence and cultural-political implications of a Central European cultural space emerged clearly. To their voices from the Soviet successor states, I add that of Egon Schwarz, an émigré intellectual from that vanished Austro-Hungarian Central Europe who, unlike the writers at Lisbon, has convinced himself that Central Europe had always been a utopia. By playing off these points of view, I argue for the validity of the key assumptions underlying my project: that Central European culture exists as a constant behind the political changes characterizing the region over the past century and a half, that this Central European culture is not exhausted by the influences of any one ethnic group or national culture, and that this culture has a certain very distinct set of implications for the identities of its authors, intellectuals, and inhabitants. In discussing this panoply of voices, I argue that Central European culture continues to impose itself as an “imagined community” on the identities and lives of its intellectuals and authors, even when it has no official existence in geopolitics. Considered politically, the region is thus always “postcolonial”: some external pow10 er has always exerted dominance over it. Yet at the same time, the region has, for the last century and a half, never lost an alternate (if relatively undefined) source of identity as the land in between, the culture of meetings, of blendings, and cultural renegotiations. The chapters that follow expand on this theoretical paradigm for the cultural existence of Central Europe as postcolonial, yet distinctive, by presenting the work of two Central European authors. These works make the case for the persistence of Central European culture as a culture of resistance to external domination—a postmodern culture as defined by Lyotard—one that resists the imposition of external master narratives by showing where those narratives cease to make sense in those everyday lives far from the power centers of the empire (such as Kafka’s K. who can never find out who wrote the orders he thought he was following). As we shall see, these narratives share the sense of a displaced geopolitics and uncertain personal identity politics as they tell the stories of Central European characters. They are thus postmodern (even if almost a century old) because they concentrate on protean identity as a function of competing traditions rather than on the crisis of personal identity that characterizes the literature of modernism. The specific, nonlinear treatment of time employed in this study deserves special note before I enter into the main body of my discussion: its chronological organization is reversed. I am comparing authors of the 1980s and the 1990s, drawn from the West (Italy) and the East (the Lisbon Conference authors) and the Center (Schwarz, Kundera), with authors as far back as the turn of the century —also from the West (Musil), the Center (Hasek and Kafka), and the East (Russian modernists). This is intentional: just as each author is not placed within an independent national/ethnic/linguistic tradition, neither are the historical conventions of dividing epochs from the turn of the century until today followed. In fact, I believe that the geopolitics of Central Europe run counter to its cultural history. Because of its unusual colonial cultural-historical situation, Central Europe has been a postmodern culture for at least a century. Such culture may never have absorbed the high modernism that characterized the literatures of the Western colonial powers, but in11 stead constituted itself as a cultural space that is somewhat paradoxically Western, but in opposition to the dominant western norms. That is, since it has always been colonized, and hence not able to exert its own cultural authority except within its own unwritten spaces, and since it has nonetheless always been Western (and hence fully able to understand various “Western tradition” as insiders, as well as colonized aliens) Central Europe tells its story in postmodern terms. Some of the narratives analyzed in this study demonstrate that the region has done so in prose for at least the last century. The theoretical paradigm offered thus moves toward a new modes of how literary history can be done, moving beyond simple dichotomies (East-West, colonized-colonizer) into a more flexible image of how dominant and non-dominant cultures have blended at the margins of Europe for the last century, not only at the brief fin de siécle but also now as the power blocks realign.

Avangarda i politika

Author(s): Marina Gržinić / Language(s): Serbian

One always searches for some symbolic point from which one can claim that something ended and something else began, even though there are no beginnings and no endings.

Sanjana nacija

Author(s): Stathis Gourgouris / Language(s): Serbian

Against the backdrop of ever-increasing nationalist violence during the last decade of the twentieth century, this book challenges standard analyses of nation formation by elaborating on the nation’s dream-like hold over the modern social imagination. The author argues that the national fantasy lies at the core of the Enlightenment imaginary, embodying its central paradox: the intertwining of anthropological universality with the primacy of a cultural ideal. Crucial to the operation of this paradox and fundamental in its ambiguity is the figure of Greece, the universal alibi and cultural predicate behind national-cultural consolidation throughout colonialist Europe. The largely unpredictable institution of a modern Greek nation in 1830 undoes the interweaving of Enlightenment and Philhellenism, whose centrifugal strands continue to unravel the certainty of European history, down to the current internal predicaments of the European Community or the tragedy of the Balkan conflicts.

Savršen zločin

Author(s): Jean Baudrillard / Language(s): Serbian

In this book, author turns detective in order to investigate a crime considering the ¨murder¨ of Reality. To solve the crime would be to unravel the technological and social processes by which our world is becoming a thing of (empty) transparency and visibility, a place where reality, swamped by the ¨real time¨ of the news media, has quite simply vanished. But author is not merely intending to lament the disappearance of the real, an occurrence he recently described as ¨the most important event of modern history¨, nor even to meditate upon the paradoxes of reality and illusion, truth and its masks. The Perfect Crime is also the work of a great moralist: it is a penetrating examination of vital aspects of the social, political and cultural life of the ¨advanced democracies¨ in the (very) late twentieth century.

Hieroglyphs of Jealousy

Author(s): Jelisaveta Blagojević / Language(s): English

When we relate love to jealousy and jealousy to love, we should be aware that there is a constant wish, or even desire, to “save” love from jealousy. Moreover, that the notion of jealousy has negative connotations: that jealousy is something that can wound the other; that jealousy is something one should be ashamed of (perhaps, being aggressive); that jealousy is something one should be fearful of (perhaps, being excluded); and what I consider as the most important – that because of jealousy one might suffer from being subject/ed to a kind of affection that is considered as “craziness,” but not any kind of craziness – the “craziness” that is at the same time craziness and banality. Being common. Being a common being.

Semiotics, image and narration. 12-th Early Fall School in Semiotics

Author(s): / Language(s): English

It is by now a tradition that the intellectual efforts of the participants at the Early Fall School in Semiotics (EFSS), organized annually by the Southeast Center for Semiotic Studies (SEECSS) at the New Bulgarian University, result in a collection of selected papers. The present volume in English and French is an outcome of the XIIth edition of the EFSS on "Semiotics, Image and Narration", held in 2006 in the town of Sozopol. It is formally divided into two parts, containing texts by 'guest lecturers' from our partner Universities in Finland, Italy and USA, as well as by 'local participants' - professors and students at the New Bulgarian University. From parchments to paper and from print to the internet, "the story of humankind has been written, and will be written upon its virtual walls" (Albertson, 1997). In the new millennium we are ever more surrounded by bulletin boards and computer networks, from advertisement banners to cyberspace. Nowadays humankind learns by watching rather than by reading or being lectured to. In order to be considered literate in the information age, the new literate person needs to be media literate as well as being proficient in literature and arithmetic.

Mieszkanie i dom jako nieoczywistość kulturowo-społeczna

Author(s): Łucja Lange,Inga B. Kuźma,Hanna Gill-Piątek,Paulina Tota,Marcin Obijalski,Zofia Garus,Magdalena Zaręba,Krystyna Dorsz,Agnieszka Sikora,Łukasz Mazur,Tomasz Majda,Adam Ploszka,Magdalena Sobas,Dagmara Bobak,Agnieszka Jędrulok,Beata Kudlińska-Wodo,Beata Siemieniako,Anna Bokszczanin,Barbara Zmaczyńska,Andrzej Kacprzak,Roland Łukasiewicz,Paulina Cichoń,Sebastian Latocha,Oksana Hałatyn-Burda / Language(s): Polish

Dyskursy gier wideo

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Niniejsza książka ma formułować propozycję metodologicznego otwarcia groznawstwa,silnie akcentując rolę dyskursu i narracji już w dwóch tekstach otwierających:„Dyskursywne gry i dyskursy gier” Geralda Voorheesa oraz „Poza mitem i metaforą.Przypadek narracji w mediach cyfrowych” Marie-Laure Ryan. Podkreślenie roli narracjii dyskursu umożliwiło również umocowanie pozostałych rozdziałów książki w dwuwzajemnie się dopełniających paradygmatach: teorii i filozofii (w części zatytułowanej„Teorie”) oraz praktyce hermeneutycznej (w części zatytułowanej „Praktyki”), dostarczającychwspólnie narzędzi do krytycznej wiwisekcji uobecniających się w grachpostaw dyskursywnych oraz narracji o świecie, kulturze, religii, filozofii, teologii, ekonomii,płciowości, rasie czy polityce. (...) Problem dyskursów gier wideo oraz dyskursóww grach wideo ujawnia zatem nie tyle bałagan, co niesłychaną produktywność ujęćbadawczych, nieograniczonych sztywnymi normami pojęć, kategorii czy narzędzi teoretycznych,które równolegle odnajdują w grach wydarzenia, znaczenia, języki, komunikaty,idee, ideologie, hierarchie i struktury władzy oraz wykluczenia. Sploty problemowew grach jako formach komunikacji, tekstach czy obiektach kulturowych skłoniłynas do zastosowania formuły liczby mnogiej w określeniu „dyskursy gier wideo” –tak, by unaocznić zarówno potrzebę pluralizacji perspektyw badawczych, jak i odpowiadającejjej różnorodności uobecniających się w grach narracji o świecie, zarównotym nas otaczającym, jak i tym przez gry wytwarzanym.

Hudebně-literární slovník. Hudební díla inspirovaná slovesným uměním. Skladatelé 20. století. III. díl slovníkové trilogie

Author(s): Vladimír Spousta / Language(s): Czech

The third part of a Musical-Literary Dictionary builds on the first two parts of the Dictionary dealing with international and Czech composers which were published by the Masaryk University Press in 2011. The third part of the Dictionary concludes a monumental dictionary trilogy. This work deals with literary production of the 20th century composers and registers only their musicial compositions which are linked to literary (exceptionally also visual) art. The link could have a form of unspecified literary, visual or musical inspiration. In the most cases the connectionis about a common idea, theme, content or text of a literary work. The Dictionary designed this way brings a new and original point of view to the 20th century artificial and non-artificial musical production in a worldwide context into Czech and world musicial and literary lexicography. The book includes 4,205 musicial works of 533 Czech and international composers living from 1930 to the present and, on the other hand, it includes also 1,995 literary authors whose literary works have inspired the birth of musicial works. Furthermore the Dictionary pays attention to folk literature and its display in musicial production and also to musical works through which their authors have paid tribute to important artists of the past.

From Rhetoric to Aesthetics: Wit and Esprit in the English and French Theoretical Writings of the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries

Author(s): Klára Bicanová / Language(s): English

The thesis deals primarily with the term wit and its modern and historical usage in literary and aesthetic theories. Further, it concerned with the literary and aesthetic implications of the terms wit and esprit as they were theorized in critical writings of several authors of the early modern England and France. The thesis has two primary goals. The first goal is to re-assess the English concept of wit, nowadays regarded as an out-dated device of past poetic systems, and to present it as vital and useful part of the contemporary discourse. The second goal is to provide comparative reading of early modern English and French theoretical texts dealing with wit and esprit, respectively. Presenting ideas on the English term wit as employed in the theoretical writings in the light of its French equivalent esprit, I wish to demonstrate a gradual development of the terms from rhetoric to aesthetic.

L’absurde dans le théâtre Dada et présurréaliste français

Author(s): Mariana Kunešová / Language(s): French

The publication focuses on the absurd in the French Dada and pre-surrealist theatre, examining the scenical potential of three texts which have, until now, remained practically unexplored: “La Premiere aventure celeste de Mr. Antipyrine” by T. Tzara, “Les Mysteres de l’amour” by R. Vitrac, and “S’il vous plait” by A. Breton and P. Soupault. The author understands the absurd as an aesthetic category applicable to theatre analysis in general – contrary to the “Theatre of the absurd”, a concept suggested by M. Esslin in order to characterize the avant-garde of the 1950s and often criticized for its lack of precision. The conclusion evaluates Esslin's contribution to the study of the absurd in theatre.

Tremendismo: el sabor amargo de la vida: Tras las huellas de la estética tremendista en la narrativa española del siglo XX

Author(s): Athena Alchazidu / Language(s): Spanish

Tremendism is one of the most peculiar phenomena that appeared on the Spanish cultural scene in the 20th century. Its origin at the beginning of the 1940s had been accompanied with several polemics that have gradually faded out. Tremendism appeared along with a new literary group, the so called Generation of 36, whose literary works influenced the later development of the Spanish narrative. A greater revival of interest in this issue took place only much later, especially in the 1990s after Camilo Jose Cela, the leading representative of tremendism, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. At the same time, new writers from the Generation X published their tremendist novels. This monograph is a contribution to the academic discussion on tremendism as a literary phenomenon.

Gaston Bachelard. Konteksty i interpretacje

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

The purpose of the book is to present a selection of studies on Bachelard’s philosophy published by researchers from various countries as part of the Bachelardian and post-Bachelardian movement, and to include articles by Polish Bachelard researchers. It cannot be said that Bachelard remains unknown in Poland, but still many important works – by Bachelard himself and other researchers commenting on his philosophy or continuing it – are known only to specialists. The book Gaston Bachelard. Contexts and Interpretations wants to fill this gap, while pointing to the presence of Polish research on Bachelardism. // The intention of this volume is to compile articles confirming the complexity of Gaston Bachelard’s philosophy and its relevance. The multitude of new readings of Bachelard’s thought, appearing in Poland and abroad, confirms that both the philosophy of science, with the concepts of new scientific mind, new rationality or epistemological obstacles introduced by Bachelard, as well as his philosophy of imagination seeking a method that adequately captures the essence of dream and image, invariably serve as an important reference point for philosophers and representatives of other scientific disciplines.

Estetické hodnocení umění a přírody

Author(s): Barbora Bakošová / Language(s): Czech Publication Year: 0

Estetika první poloviny dvacátého století pokračovala v tradici století devatenáctého a plně se orientovala na oblast umění, z něhož čerpala příklady pro svá teoretická východiska. Zaměřila se tak na estetické prožitky par excellence, jimiž prožitky umění nesporně byly. Umělecké dílo bylo pro estetické hodnocení nejadekvátnějším objektem, protože zde dominovala estetická funkce oproti jiným (ekonomickým, sociálním, ekologickým a dalším). Umění v té době procházelo radikální transformací, odřezávalo se od tradičních forem, s čímž se bylo nutné vypořádat i na poli estetiky. Estetické teorie se spíše redukovaly na uměleckou kritiku a hledaly způsob, jak teoreticky přistupovat k tak různorodým uměleckým projevům. Moderna navíc nesměřovala k nápodobě vnějšího světa, ale k abstrakci a introspekci, u nichž stála příroda jako umělecký objekt přirozeně stranou.

Narativní a ambientní dimenze estetické hodnoty environmentu

Author(s): Kateřina Pařízková / Language(s): Czech Publication Year: 0

„V prosinci roku 1968 jsme mohli poprvé spatřit, jak tohle stabilní a bezpečné místo vypadá. Appolo 8 kroužilo kolem Měsíce a astronauti fotografovali místa, kde by mohly přistát další výpravy. Během čtvrtého obletu se velitel Frank Borman rozhodl stočit loď tak, aby okna směřovala k měsíčnímu obzoru – potřeboval to kvůli upřesnění polohy. Jenže místo toho se před ním rozevřel pohled na vycházející Zemi. ,Bože, tamhle vychází Země,‘ zvolal. Další člen posádky, Bill Anders, popadl fotoaparát a stiskl spoušť. Jeho snímek, možná nejikoničtější fotografie vůbec, byl později pojmenován Východ Země. Je na něm modrobílý oblázek vznášející se na pozadí nedozírného vesmíru, který stoupá nad pustý Měsíc bez známky života. Borman později prohlásil, že to byl ,ten nejnádhernější pohled mého života, který mě vzal za srdce a zaplavil tesknou touhou a nesmírným steskem po domově. Bylo to to jediné v celém vesmíru, co mělo nějakou barvu. Všechno ostatní bylo buď bílé, nebo černé. Jen Země ne.‘ Třetí člen posádky, Jim Lovell, to vyjádřil jednodušeji: Země mu připadala jako ,nádherná oáza‘.“

INTERDISCIPLINÁRNÍ VHLED WŁADYSŁAWA TATARKIEWICZE DO ESTETIKY A UMĚNÍ

Author(s): Hana Vondrů / Language(s): Czech Publication Year: 0

This paper discusses Tatarkiewiczʼs, a Polish humanist, contribution to aesthetics. His writings can be described as interdisciplinary, and his influence on many branches of humanites is widely recognised. The first part of this paper contains biographical information on his professional life, publications and papers. Tatarkiewiczʼs approach to aesthetics was influenced by his knowledge of philosophy and art history e second part of this paper focuses on scholarly works and important publications in aesthetics (History of Aesthetics, Droga przez estetykę and A History of Six Ideas). His publications and papers present a systematic interpretation of history and definitions of terms and historical aesthetic concepts. The goal of this paper is to define methods of interpretation in Tatarkiewiczʼs works.

[RE]READINGS OF THE PERFECT. MYSTICISM OF JAMES LEE BYARS

Author(s): Juan Agustín Mancebo Roca / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The complex contextualization of the work of James Lee Byars (1932–1997) in contemporary artistic practices was determined by its timelessness in both form and concept. Considered by Kevin Power as one of the key artists of the second half of the twentieth century alongside figures such as Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol, his legacy seems to have declined probably because of the discomfort caused by the approach to his work, since any previous consideration and attempt at cataloging, escapes through the loopholes on which they are based. Byars’ performances and pieces were mostly structured around the cryptic concept of perfection. The artist’s mission, in this case, takes on the roles of a shaman and a magician who questions the illegibility of a world whose materialism seems to have expelled any consideration of the sacred, thus articulating a work that, far from providing answers, raises questions about the ultimate meaning of life. Gold, geometry, time (and its transience), space (re-signified by his cultural heritage), language and the body expressed a proposal in which installations and actions are the instruments he uses primarily to question us about the big questions. Byars in this sense has been considered a mystic, since he places us at the doors of a new perception to make us uncomfortable and provoke us, to transmit us the questions about being in the world.

Memoria et monumentum: „Barokní princip“ v teorii umění Vojtěcha Birnbauma

Author(s): Tomáš Murár / Language(s): Czech Publication Year: 0

Za jedno z takovýchto umělecko-teoretických a umělecko-filozofických reflexí emocionálního a afektivního „prostoru“, který byl uměle a násilně ideologicky vytvářen v době hrozby ztráty kulturní tradice a nebezpečí vymazávání hodnot jednotlivce stejně jako celého společenství, potažmo kultury, tedy v době první poloviny čtyřicátých let 20. století, může být brána i diskuze o monumentalitě v architektuře z roku 1943 a 1944, otištěné v časopise Architekt SIA.

Umělecké dílo v masové kultuře

Author(s): Tereza Krementáková / Language(s): Czech Publication Year: 0

Cílem této práce je poukázat na aspekty, které se zdály být problematické či negativně ovlivňovaly umění a jeho tvorbu na pozadí masové kultury podle vybraných autorů. Technologický proces, monopolizační snahy, industrializace společnosti, to jsou okolnosti, které daly umění možnosti nového směrování. Proto se staly terčem kritiky Theodora W. Adorna a Waltera Benjamina. Oba autoři jsou představitelé Kritické teorie, která se formovala v první polovině dvacátého století. Zkoumají podmínky, které se vynořily pro svět umění v moderní a postmoderní společnosti. Tyto nové aspekty považují za možnou příčinu úpadkovosti a představují tak určité nebezpečí.

Considerations of the Beautiful and the Sublime In Art

Author(s): Simina Georgiana Cherecheș / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

By deepening these two themes of the world that surrounds us we find an aesthetics of the environment, of the pleasant environment that we find in beautiful objects and human works created by man over the centuries. By beautiful, we find the idea of pleasantness, of things with an aspect out of relief, of human qualities that we cannot but expose and detail in the most meaningful way. Although the things around us have a certain aesthetic and give us a more pleasant mood, they are transient, like any creation that man has created over time, because they are designed, evolve, and must periodically reinvent themselves in order to preserve this form of beauty. But what truly remains a beautiful thing that always makes us feel good and has remained the same since life on earth began is what we call human qualities, kindness, honesty, love from where we least expect it, and the care we receive from our loved ones. Most famous thinkers expound human values as those that are driven by the idea of beauty. The sublime is what we might describe when we experience a state of awe, when we experience unique moments in our lives, when we glimpse a phenomenon in nature that touches our heartstrings, when we see a rainbow, when we take part in a solar eclipse or a volcano eruption, these things bring man to the point where his heartstrings are touched and he feels life on another level. Although man has succeeded in creating impressive things through painting and sculpture, thus creating a pleasant environment, he does not succeed in exposing artistic experiences as deeply as the natural environment does.