The general idea for this article goes back to the rigorous discussions of Bruno Schulz and the notions of tolerance in two seminars taught by Prof. Dr. Markowski and Dr. Rebes at the Jagiellonian University of Cracow during the winter term 2007/2008. The article discusses the relation of liminality and transcendence in the writings of the Polish writer Bruno Schulz. Based on an analysis of several of Schulz’s short stories the dichotomous relation between reality and transcendence is examined. The central point of interest is the contact zone, which is regarded as a liminal space between reality and transcendence. Following Ewa Karpinska, this border is understood as both, dividing and ordering. The introduction of the border shifts the analysis from temporal to spatial terms, which allows understanding the juxtaposition or even the simultaneous existence of both, reality and transcendence. This exactly is the Schulzian struggle. Having opened that field the essay introduces the ethical principles of Immanuel Levinas. The latter’s radical ethics of morality and Jozef Tischner’s conceptualization this, the Philosophy of Drama, are than applied to Schulzian writing. This opens up a new way of accessing the liminality in contact zones. It is the unveiling and stepping out of an isolated and constructed reality that is the aim of the protagonist in Schulz’s stories. His striving for the ‘pure’ compares to what in Levinas’ philosophy would be the striving towards the other’s Antlitz. This desire can never be fully reached, but it is the idea of desiring as such that Levinas introduces. This idea is laid out by Schulz in his philosophically programmatic essay Mythologizing of Reality. The condition of desire manifests itself as an unstable liminality. This fragile status of liminality prevents the protagonist from getting stuck in dull materiality of a „fake reality” or, in Levinas’ case, it prevents the I from getting stuck in the egocentric borders of self-sufficiency and ignorance.
The aim of this paper is to shed new light on the question of globalization, using the concept 'axis time' or 'axial age', coined by Jaspers, and developed further by Eric Voegelin and Shmuel Eisenstadt. It argues that the current processes of globalization can be better understood through the developments of the 'first global age', the age of the world-conquering empires (Persian, Macedonian and Roman). Using contemporary work in comparative anthropology and mythology, especially by Victor Turner (liminality) and Rene Girard (sacrificial crisis), it reconstructs axial age thought and spirituality, from classical Hebrew prophecy and the pre-Socratic philosophy to Buddha and Plato as attempted responses given to the liminal crisis of the age of empire-building, focusing on the restoration of measure. In its last section the paper argues that the sociologically effective response to the crisis was given by the rise of Christianity, as it managed to reverse the spiraling movement of violence and conquest by an opposite type of spiral, based on grace and gift-giving.
This article analyses the cult of 'Cankili Canniyaci' or the Ascetic with a Chain as observed by the authoress during her research in rural areas of Tamil Nadu. The analysis of this continually evolving cult leads her to more general reflections on deification in Indian culture, especially to the identification of liminality as the primary condition for deification. Like other deified groups (e.g. fallen warriors, widows who committed ritual suicide), 'Cankili Canniyaci' has a borderline existence and his death violates the natural ending of human life. The authoress demonstrates that stories about 'Cankili Canniyaci' can be interpreted as a myth about the trickster whose power is rooted in his liminal position and at the same time inextricably linked to transgression. Using Tamil religious terminology, 'Cankili Canniyaci' is qualified as a typical 'ciru teyvam' (small god) of terrestrial origin who operates on the borderline between the worlds of humans and gods.
Post-communist landscapes are undergoing continuous process of transformations, more dynamically than many others types of cultural landscapes. One interpretation is followed by another reinterpretation; from the early festive anti-communist cleansings, thought discreet minor re-interpretations, infused by local and national political transformations, to contemporary ‘deep peeling’ or second wave of landscape purges. It looks like, contrary to the progressive van Gennep model of liminality, tradition oriented Polish society has been stacked up in a liminal limbo, unable or/and unwilling to go further and forget or assimilate the real or alleged communist landscapes. Since the 2016 election and the rise of populist-right powers, the Polish landscape has been haunted by the ghosts of communist past and it became clear that the past is still lives here now. New landscape modes of interpretations has been imposed and the spectre of communism, as Marx said almost 170 years, is still haunting over Central and Eastern Europe.
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