Sebastian Borowicz

The result of interdisciplinary collaboration of specialists in the field of humanities, who consider the technologisation of education as one of the key challenges of modern times, took the shape of a book titled: Technopaideia. Advanced technologies in humanistic education. The research leading to this publication was conducted at the Centre for Multimodal Educational and Cultural Research at the Jagiellonian University. The book explores the role of multimodality and the impact of advanced technologies and digital environments on school and academic didactics. The authors: philosophers, cultural and literary scholars, media experts, art historians, critics and artists not only offer diagnosis of the current state of research on the use of increasingly sophisticated technological tools, but also endeavour to create a multimodal module for a novel cultural education. This module will serve as a crucial bridge between the realms of technoscience and humanitas, preventing the latter from becoming overly scientific.

The term technopaideia, developed at the OMBEiK, is a central concept in the proposed educational model. One element of the term emphasises the importance of techne, the reflective and non-intrusive integration of advanced technologies and elements of the STEM model into the teaching of humanities subjects. Other aspect goes beyond traditional education, as paideia in this approach involves introducing individuals to a new community and social dynamics. It fosters interaction in the spirit of solidarity, skilful sharing and the use of knowledge drawn from different disciplines. Such a multimodal, multi-perspective humanities education combines a performative approach with theoretical reflection fitted in the cognitive framework inherent in the humanities, characterised by criticality and interpretation. The approach enables students to expand their traditional interpretive skills to include multimodality, polysensitivity, agency and embodied thinking. These elements are particularly relevant to contemporary literature and art, which involve acts of kinesthetics and spatiality. Finally, the proposed education model aims to build a transversal mindset capable of navigating seamlessly between different modalities, disciplines and discourses. Its goal is to break down the barriers that separate science and art, making it possible for individuals to exist consciously and critically in various worlds and technoworlds.

Międzyliteartura jest tomem zbiorowym dedykowanym pamięci Profesor Anny Pilch, ale ma niewiele wspólnego z klasyczną formą, jaką jest Festschrift. (…) Teksty odznaczają się wysokimi walorami poznawczymi; są nie tylko wyrazem hołdu i uznania, ale łączy je równocześnie nić przyjaźni oparta na wspólnych zainteresowaniach, na podobnym sposobie myślenia i współodczuwania świata, na solidnych zasadach etycznych stanowiących podstawę lektury.
/Z recenzji prof. dra hab. Adama Dziadka/

Stawiając nas przed obrazami wielkich mistrzów, Anna Pilch udzieliła nam piękniej i wartościowej lekcji etyki i humanizmu. Dzięki niej nasza lektura świata stawała się nie tylko wędrówką przez arkana estetyki, ale także przez przestrzenie ludzkiej egzystencji. W kształcie tej książki zwracamy więc to, czego sami w rozmowach z Anną Pilch i z jej prac nauczyliśmy się o człowieku w relacji do poezji i malarstwa. Dialog stał się tu uniwersalnym narzędziem odnajdywania i odkrywania człowieka przez literaturę, sztukę i wreszcie edukację polonistyczną pojmowaną możliwie szeroko jako kształtowanie międzyludzkiej więzi.

Międzyliteratura tworzy przestrzeń interdyscyplinarności, wielowymiarowości, rozmów i spotkań, negocjowania znaczeń, nieustającej gry sztuk i ze sztuką. Jest tym, co rozpościera się między teorią a interpretacją, intuicją a krytyką, na pograniczach humanistyki, między metodą a praktyką. Równolegle stanowi ona przestrzeń dialogu między odbiorcą a tekstem, między patrzeniem i obserwacją a próbą rozsmakowania nas w szczegółach i detalach, to znaczy między czytaniem, pisaniem a poszukiwaniem i wytwarzaniem sensu. W końcu zaś nieustannym balansowaniem między wizualnością a tekstualnością.
   
/Redaktorzy tomu/

The article explores the concept of sympotic poetics in European culture as a distinctive form of discourse. This tradition originated in the Greek civilisation during the archaic period as a technique for socialisation within aristocratic culture and subsequently developed in Roman culture during the imperial period. Sympotic poetics thrived in medieval and modern Europe, where new forms of literary games, rooted in the intellectual traditions of antiquity, emerged. The article examines the beginnings of scholarly literary discussion and reviews selected examples of sympotic discussion practices in European culture.

The article deals with the meaning and function of the figure of an old, drunken, and foolish woman in the writings of St. John Chrysostom. The issue is discussed historical, social, cultural, theological, and rhetorical levels. My point of departure is the figure of old, drunken hag making amulets and performing healings. Subsequently, I move to the analysis of wine and madness significance, as well as their theological dimension in early Christian authors. This consequently enables me to reconstruct the rhetorical function of the figure of anus ebria et delirans in the homilies of St John Chrysostom, including its role as the antithesis of Christ and personification of the pagan world.

The article deals with some exceptional aspects of the ancient eschatological imagery
and its conceptual connection with the general idea of the Greek and Roman Underworld. The first part of the analysis, based on Classical literature sources and visual arts (geniale imagines), concerns a very peculiar notion of methe aionios, which should be referred to the popular mode of conceiving death and afterlife among Greek and Roman society. The Greek mind used to understand the other world through the act of mimesis. Hence, common eschatological beliefs concerning human post mortem condition were conceptualized via ideas and metaphors such as eternal happiness, felicity and abundance. These concepts found its mirror image in extraordinary forms of artistic and literary expression like numerous convivial and banqueting scenes represented on funeral monuments (Totenmahl reliefs) or described in literary sources (mostly epigrams and comedies). They usually indicated a comfortable stay of a deceased person in the afterlife (eschatological sense) or had strictly consolatory character for living people (carpe diem; quasi-eschatological sense). Frequently, however, it is impossible to differentiate between these two opposite functions of such images. Nevertheless, one of the most significant elements of the above mentioned beliefs was the concept of the “eternal inebriation” understood as a very special state of blissful existence after death. This odd idea simultaneously illustrates the mechanism in displaying abstract notions connected with the sphere of the Greek and Roman death. In the second part of the analysis, two representations of the anus ebria type were placed in the context of the idea of methe aionios. The first one is the famous monumental figure of old drunken woman. The second one is small terracotta figurine of old nurse holding lagynos and a child Dionysus from the ex-Lanckoroński collection. The image of graus oinophoros created out of antiideas, cliches that violate or distinctly undermine the cultural taboo might be considered here as the eschatological liberation figure as well as one of the most characteristic signs of the ”eschatology of inebriation”.

Sebastian BOROWICZ Jagiellonian University (Kraków) Image As the Act of Consolation. Some Remarks on the Metaphor of Passage in the Classical Literature The article deals with the problem of the Greek consciousness’ limited ability to image certain abstract notions: abysm/chasm, death and the Underworld in the Classical period. The first part of the analysis, based on Greek classical literature sources, concerns the general problem of categorization and conceptualization of the idea of the Underworld which human consciousness was trying to seize by means of a metaphor „to die is to pass”. The author argues that the ability of the human mind (gnome) to understand abstract notions metaphorically limits the idea of the Underworld simultaneously; it is a reversed reflection of the senses experienced during reality, which creates the anti-world of human visions of passage into a different space. Only the notion of chasm does not have its mirror image; however, it is still perceived as a ...

Abstract

What one can see in an ancient Greek painting? It is not an obvious question, because the way we interpret images from the distant past is based on the modern model of perception, including the notion of space understood as the capacity and the place for things, and the surface treated as an extension. This three-dimensional, mathematical model is thus in a way imposed onto the old paintings by us. Similarly, we transform Greek paintings into images, often not realising that the category of representation is a kind of intellectual invention of Plato’s epoch. This article is an attempt to go beyond the mentioned anachronistic categories of interpretation – to look at the painted worlds through the eyes of a Greek of the pre-metaphysical era. To this end, the particular perceptual strategy of Odysseus is evoked, who, arriving in unknown lands, climbs the highest cliff or steep hill and looks around “in a place with a view” in order to be able to see something. This is why I propose to treat the bulging surface of the Greek vase in terms of a Homeric place of prominence and visibility. It allows us to see something that cannot be seen in any other place. The surface of a Greek vase, like that Homeric “place with a view”, establishes a view and a closeup – it is at the same time a close-up with something distant in time and space, a kind of experience close to Heidegger’s Entfernung.

Medieval literature is filled with comical, ugly old ladies. We find them in Latin comedy, in Italian lyric poetry, as well as in such genres as exempla, fabule, canti and in various varieties of folk farce (sotie, Mären, Schwänke, fabliaux or Fastnachtspiele). However, their role transcends the immediate ‘comic effect’. The medieval vetula turns out to be a parallel, socially programmed rhetorical figure – a bodily construction of the ‘politics of morality’ of the time. As a fraudulent and deceptive maledicta vetula, she shows stupidity construed mainly as godlessness, a kind of madness. The many literary examples of ugly, old women fit into the fascinating universal cultural cliché of anus ebria et delirans, which connected important social contexts during the Middle Ages. Remarkably, the literature of the period ultimately formed this ‘pattern of impropriety’ in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in the times of aetas ovidiana, the heyday of Provençal troubadour poetry, roman courtois or dolce stil nuovo lyricism. It appears that sublime literature cannot dispense with its farcical and fairytale antithesis – the beautiful Beatrice – without its opposite, the Anti-Beatrice. The aim of the article is to present selected literary versions of ugly, old ladies in terms of the category of social comedy and the workings of cultural mechanisms for organising social space by means of the ‘politics of laughter’.

Participation, transfer, flow and transduction are what counts in our culture, which is a global exchange network. The traditional, interpretive or reflective attitude has long since ceased to be sufficient for modern humans. We are beginning to “think with deeds” once again. The performative attitude has proved to be the dominant attitude of humans, who do not want to watch or explore the world, but rather choose, almost without reflection, to immerse themselves in the network of relations and interactions. In this regard, the new media, digital world, virtual reality redefine it in a revolutionary way, while leaving its profound mark on the category of education. With these changes in mind, I propose to consider the Greek category of paideia once again. This is not so much education based on the construction of a human as a machine for acquiring more and more advanced knowledge as on anthrōpismos, the formation of humans (society as a community of values; culture as experience and participation). In this respect, the new paideia is a set of non-traditional, progressive characteristics that begin to determine, define and structure education processes in connection with how they function in technotopies, hitherto unknown environments inspired by the extremely rapid development of science at the beginning of the 21st century. However, this is not a matter of recalling a forgotten, archaic model of education, but about acquiring for the modern, technicalized world those elements that seem to be an answer to the process of dehumanization of the world.

The proximity of the late archaic Greek philosophical breakthrough and postmodernity is based on the analogy of a media and intellectual revolution that takes place in both periods. Greek culture of the 6th and early 5th century BCE gradually moves from orality to literacy, from performativity and affection towards an intellectual view of the world and reflective being, from a world that is shared with non-human beings to the world of human monody. Modernity, however, seems to reverse these trends. Nevertheless, we do not go into the past but reach a higher level of archaicity. From this point of view, postmodernity becomes postarchaicity; this is a chance that in the moment of historical contiguity, vivisection of our culture will reveal still active common places, allowing us to explore images before the metaphysical era. The starting point of the analysis is the question “What is the image?” posed by Maurice Blanchot and his extremely insightful answer to this question.

In the high and late Middle Ages, image of an old woman was used as a medium and carrier of a dominant ideology in scientific (medicine), theological (sermons) and cultural (literature, arts) discourse. Medieval and early modern vetula was not just a person. She was also a programmed rhetorical figure, a structure of the “politics of morality” clothed in a body. As a deceitful and deceptive “cursed old woman” (maledicta vetula), who shows stupidity understood mainly as impiety, a kind of madness, she became an improper image, a perverse one, an antithesis of a physical and inner beauty. It is anus ebria et delirans, anti-Beatrix – the one, who has the power to turn existing norms and behaviors upside-down