Karl Kraus

Author(s): Walter Benjamin / Language(s): Serbian Publication Year: 0

Stari bakrorezi imaju glasnika, što pritrčava vičući, razbarušene kose, mašući u rukama listom, koji pun rata i kuge, ubilačkog pokliča i bola, požara i poplava širi na sve strane »najnovije vesti«. Novine u tom smislu i značenju koje ta reč ima kod Šekspira, jesu Baklja. Pune izdaje, zemljotresa, otrova i požara iz mundusa intelligibilisa. Mržnja kojom progone nepregledno gamižući novinarski soj, pre je vitalna nego moralna, slična onoj sa kakvom se praotac okomio na naraštaj izopačenih kepeca-obešenjaka proizašao iz njegovog semena.

DaDa Gramofon (o upadima realnog ili o The galaxy of events – galaksiji događaja)

Author(s): Jovan Čekić / Language(s): Serbian Publication Year: 0

What Relations are possible to the galaxy of events and coincidence of meeting? There are a different approach from the artist, like Duchamp, novelist Joyce, to the philosopher Derrida. Each of them had a different solutions, but not as a final or universal, but rather as a game in a different context.

Žak Derida, Robert Muzil: putevi s one strane stvarnog

Author(s): Aleksandra Kostić / Language(s): Serbian Publication Year: 0

Author initially attempts to differentiate ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’ stance by emphasizing the subtle distinction between Derrida’s notion of peut-ętre (maybe) and Robert Musil’s concept of Möglichkeit (possible). These two notions are similar but nevertheless they can exemplify two different approaches to the realm beyond Reality: derridian ‘maybe’ refers to the openness of things, to surprise and ‘event’, whereas ‘possibility’ remains, by means of causality, motivation, utopism, etc., tied to existing reality. In the conclusion author suggests that ‘contemporary times’ – illustrated by Sloterdijk’s pictoresque portrait of polyvalent logics – demand ‘maybeness’ that encompass and surpass musilian contemplation on unreal, but possible things.

The City That Is Not: Apophasis and Anglo-Saxon Urbanism

Author(s): Rafał Borysławski / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The article discusses two Old English cases of walking through cities that no longer exist and the implications that such visions entail for early medieval philosophical perspectives. The first part proposes a conjectural vision of the city of Rome from around the time of the visits of young Prince Alfred of Wessex, future King Alfred the Great, in 853 and in 855 A.D. The second part is constructed upon an understanding of one of the Exeter Book elegies, “The Ruin”, presenting musings on whatever remained from another Roman city, conceivably identifiable with Aqua Sulis, that is, Bath. The reflections of the former encounter with the city may be, perhaps, found in the Meters that accompany Alfred-inspired translation of Boethius’s “De consolatione philosophiae”, and the city present in “The Ruin” is another example of the excidio urbis theme. Together, the two visions confirm the Old English metaphysical value of the city that becomes its negative, that is, the city that is formed by absences, lacunae, and vestiges of its past. Seen in this light, the “cities that are not” are presented here as instances of apophatic thinking, akin to that of Pseudo-Dionysius, whereby more can be expressed by questions and negative statements than by factual testimonials. The proposed Anglo-Saxon walks through ruined cities paradoxically offer an augmentation of reality and an existential practice in the elusiveness of signification extending beyond urban boundaries.

The Maze, the Fog, the Mass, the Dog: Sherlock Holmes in London

Author(s): Justyna Jajszczok / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The article revolves around the concept of the late-Victorian London as an accomplice in crime. Employing a number of literary examples but mostly concentrating on Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, the text investigates specific techniques the metropolis uses in order to aid criminals and hinder the work of law-enforcement officers. The labyrinthine structure of the city, its ability to envelop itself in impenetrable yellow fog, and its vast population make the late nineteenth-century London a haven for wrongdoers. The final part of the article presents arguments in favour of the claim that only Sherlock Holmes is capable of leading a successful career of a private investigator in such a crime-aiding city. This is made possible not just because of his extraordinary observational skills, but also due to the fact that the detective, as presented in the stories, possesses a number of unique canine features which make him immune to London’s tricks.

The Portrait of the City in Wim Wenders’s “Lisbon Story”

Author(s): Sonia Front / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The paper addresses the depiction of the city in Wim Wenders’s film “Lisbon Story” (1994). The film meditates on the “death of the cinema” resulting from the commercialization of the image and globalization of culture, accompanied by the destruction of space. Wenders protests against the postmodernist consumption and homogeneity of space by presenting Lisbon as a city arrested in time, beyond the impact of corporate culture. Expressing his distrust of images, he creates a heterogeneous portrait of the city, superimposing soundscape over the landscape, whereby sounds, particularly music, encode the emotional attitude to the city, experienced in a kinesthetic manner.

Walking through (Hi)stories: City and Temporality in Vandana Singh’s “Delhi”

Author(s): Agnieszka Podruczna / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The article constitutes an attempt at an in-depth analysis of the way in which Vandana Singh, in her short story “Delhi,” engages in a discussion concerning the relationship between the urban space, hegemonic colonial narrative, and the subjectivity of the historical account, reframing it in terms of speculative fiction. This practice, framed as a counter-discursive attempt at rewriting the history of the Other, allows the author to comment upon the ways in which that history has been created and shaped. Adopting the postcolonial discourse as well as theory of science fiction as the primary methodological background, the article aims to explore the themes of collective memory and postcolonial reclaiming practices, framed in terms of a spatial-temporal journey through the urban space of Delhi, with the view of substantiating the thesis that the act of walking through the city in both the spatial and the temporal sense constitutes a counter-discursive attempt at reclaiming the colonial narrative and challenging the status quo.

Amidst the Wonders of the City: Countenances of Moscow in Barbara Włodarczyk’s “Wide Tracks”

Author(s): Monika Kowalczyk-Piaseczna / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The article analyses the various countenances of Moscow which have been presented by Barbara Włodarczyk in the cycle of television reportages “Wide Tracks”. The text focuses on illustrating the specific features of a film report that allow its author to present the wondrous picture of the Russian capital emerging from the particular fragments of the discussed reportages. Moreover, as a result of juxtaposition of the reports from that part of the city, which overwhelms one with its richness and splendour, with the accounts from these corners of Moscow in which the continuous struggle for survival takes place, the article examines the internal contradictions which may be observed within the depicted urban space. The analysed cycle also exposes the series of political conflicts which undermine the immaculate image of Moscow as a wondrous city, presented by some of the characters of the discussed film pictures, and simultaneously, it allows one to discover some new, less known countenances of the metropolis.

Anorexia and the City: Special Significance of the Urban Environment in Eating Disorder Memoirs

Author(s): Nina Augustynowicz / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The article examines a book of memoirs belonging to a larger group of textual representations of individual struggle with anorexia in order to shed light on the city as a crucial character in the account of the disease. “Kid Rex: The Inspiring True Account of a Life Salvaged from Anorexia, Despair and Dark Days in New York City” (2008) by Laura Moisin is one of many recent publications touching upon the subject of eating disorders penned by and depicting the life of young upper middle class big city women. First notable books of this kind appeared around 1980, while since the beginning of this century we have been observing a steady increase in this respect, resulting in the proliferation of these personal narratives in popular culture. In accordance with the research suggesting that the incidence of eating disorders is higher in urban areas, publications of this kind all seem to refer to such environments; however, the aforementioned book could be considered special here as it portrays the deep-reaching relations between witnessing the events of September 11 attacks and the development of the disease. Even though it remains unclear which elements of cityscapes are responsible for the higher incidence of the anorexia, the acute experiences offered by NYC around the time of the attack highlight the probable causes. Employing the interdisciplinary perspectives offered by psychogeography, food studies and sociology of medicine, the article analyses how the influence of the city on female victims of anorexia is presented in the memoir to show that urban spaces may function both as a symptom of and as a factor contributing to the disease.

Anxious City: The Fears and Apprehensions of Citizens and Tourists in Modern Urban Areas

Author(s): Bożena Kilian / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

In today’s world numerous dangers seem to threaten human lives. Modern society is claimed to be fearful and anxious, hence it is exposed to perils that are neither comprehensive nor controllable. Both global and local threats, such as economic crises, unprecedented technological advancement, terrorism or climate change and the increasing instability in the job market, crime or otherness influence everyday existence of modern man, who becomes increasingly apprehensive. The persistent atmosphere of fear is additionally nourished and sustained by the ubiquitous message presented by the media, which selectively focus on the negative broadcast. Modern cities, which are now perceived as a location where otherness is to be rather feared than praised and cultivated, are believed to be places which encapsulate almost all contemporary fears. First and foremost, they are scenes where the fear of crime takes its toll. Not only does it shape the structure of the city, as it leads to the establishment of the so-called gated communities, occupying closed and guarded estates, but primarily the relationships among different formal and informal social groups existing within the city. Feared are those of different race, religion, nationality, social status, gender, and even age. Being other, feared are also those coming to cities as tourists. In the face of the fact that city tourism is on the increase one could suspect that this is entirely safe and entertaining pastime; however, the analysis of urban tourism leaves no doubt that it also brings certain dose of fear and anxiety. The article aims at presenting various fears and anxieties experienced within urban area by both tourists and citizens.

Between Architecture and Cultural Studies: Reflections on the Constitution and Devaluation of Urban Public Spaces

Author(s): Andrzej Bełdowski,Tomasz Burzyński / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

This interdisciplinary paper aims to outline the role of architecture in the societal construction and devaluation of civic public spaces from the perspectives of theoretical architecture, cultural studies, and theory of culture. When perceived in the context of the agency/structure duality, urban public spaces could be seen as societal constructs whose character and identity can be traced to the holistic organisation of architectural forms within a given locale. At the same time, the deflation in the quality of public spaces may be explained by making references to mutually reinforcing processes of spatial commodification and symbolic violence which are both exercised by implanting pure, self-explicable architectural forms into well-entrenched urban spaces.

Deconstructing Utopia

Author(s): Krzysztof M. Maj / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

SimCity: Where the City Ends

Author(s): Michał Kłosiński / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Digging the Trench

Author(s): Verena Adamik / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The Analysis of the Element of Space in Negative Utopias by Antoni Lange, Jan Dobraczyński & Vladímir Páral

Author(s): Aleksandra Paluch / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Predodžbe o franjevcima u savremenoj bošnjačkoj književnosti

Author(s): Ena Begović-Sokolija / Language(s): Bosnian Publication Year: 0

The topic of Franciscanism in literature is not reserved solely for Ivo Andric (although ‘Andric’s Franciscans’ have been extensively written about within literary criticism), nor is it reserved for Croatian literature in general. This work, from imagological prospective, offers the reading of fifteen texts from modern Bosniak literature that vary in genre and which remember Bosnian Franciscans – historical personalities (Anđeo Zvizdović, Matija Divković, Juraj Dragišić, Ivan Frano Jukić, Grgo Martić, Matheus Bartl (Mato Banjalučanin), Miroslav (Tomislav) Filipović / Majstorović, Ljubo Hrgić, Ivo Marković), but which also offer an image of Bosnian Franciscanism, in Bosniak visure. It has been shown that the ideas and images of Bosnian Franciscans in poems, short-stories, novels and dramas of Bosniak literature are mainly positive, but even when they’re not – they are understandable and expected if one bears in mind the questions that are the subject of imagological consideration of the text: WHO, TO WHOM, WHEN and HOW is one speaking. The work concludes that between several views of the ethnic (cultural) identity being realized (also) in literature (from Karahasan’s garden to Lovrenović’s rainbow colours to Spahić’s “poetry of kaleidoscope”) it is not impossible to talk about all of them within one text i.e. about Bosniak literature at the same time and that Bosniak authors too are meritorious for the symbolical imaginarium of Franciscanism within the identification fields of Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature.

Märchen als Adaptionen in Fan-Fiction. Eine kulturwissenschaftliche Annäherung

Author(s): Malte Völk / Language(s): German Publication Year: 0

This paper aims to analyse transformative works of derivative nature – fan fiction – which are based on fairy tales. They are examined in the context of popular culture studies, with a focus on critical theory and Siegfried Kracauer’s concept of Märchenvernunft – the juxtaposition of reason and fairy tales. An outline of the historical roots of fan fiction in the 18th century lays the foundation for the theoretical findings and the analyses of some contemporary fan-fiction tales.

Als sich Covid-19 in die Märchenwelt einschlich… Zur Rezeption der Grimmschen Motive in "Corona-Märchen" von Izabella Czarnecka

Author(s): Dorota Sadowska / Language(s): German Publication Year: 0

In this article I analyse Koronabajki [Coronatales], juxtaposing them with their prototypes from the fairy-tale collection of the Brothers Grimm. I try to answer the questions of what elements of fairy-tale plot patterns the author kept in her works, which ones she omitted, and, in connection with this, what functions attributed to classical fairy tales – therapeutic, ludic, etc. – can be attributed to these short literary forms and what significance this has for readers.

Zum Bild der Deutschen und des Deutschen in polnischen Volksmärchen aus der Sammlung von Oskar Kolberg

Author(s): Katarzyna Grzywka-Kolago / Language(s): German Publication Year: 0

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the image of Germans and of folk-tale characters’ German attributes from the perspective of comparative imagology via the analysis of folk tales collected by Oskar Kolberg. Building on the theoretical framework proposed by Holger M. Klein, this study discusses the historical and cultural background of Kolberg’s collection, examines the significance of the Kolberg family’s German roots, wonders about the intended addressee of the ethnographer’s publications, and investigates the contents of folk tales which feature the motif of the German and German attributes of folk-tale characters.

„Edle Räuber“ in georgischer Volksdichtung und Literatur

Author(s): Elene Gogiashvili / Language(s): German Publication Year: 0

In the European and Caucasian traditional folk narratives, there are different types of romanticised bandits. This phenomenon occurs in many societies and is described in various forms in oral tradition: epics, songs, folk tales, and anecdotes. The images of the robbers are part of a mythology of heroic lawlessness. Historical and fictional figures of robbers have been heroised and established as “social bandits” and repeatedly referred to with the term “noble robber.” In Georgian folk tales, realistic tales and anecdotes, the theme of robbers has been interpreted differently. The international fairy-tale motifs in Georgian folklore joined the national repertoire. There is a difference between fictional and non-fictional robbers in Georgian folklore. In folk tales, fairy tales and realistic tales, the fictional image of the robber is antagonistic in nature. In contrast to the folk tales, the historical robbers appear in other genres of folk narratives as outlaws whom the state regards as criminals, but in peasant society, they are considered heroes, avengers and fighters for justice and even leaders of liberation.