This paper focuses on how cyberthreats have been represented in popular visual culture (Western and Asian). These cultural products are an interesting site where the technical and the political effects of cyberthreats are presented together, giving them a particular weight and place in the discourse. The paper discusses three dominant representations (machine out-of-control, computers used as weapons, and amassing or withholding of data as threat) and then identifies three commonalities between them. The first concerns the surprising “passivity” of technology, making the human the main problem in this story, the second is the importance of non-virtual geography, turning machines into mere additions of normal human life, and the third concerns the normalization of the threat through time. Cyberthreats are part of our lives now and they are so deeply embedded, they cannot be separated from them anymore.

In this article, a single poster about the land reform carried out by the Peopleʼs Democratic Party of Afghanistan is discussed. The starting point for the project is the statement that persuasion is more effective than compulsion and that the Afghan communists did not find any formula to engage in effective dialogue with their society. The primary question is: what kind of communication and what sort of themes/motifs played a significant role in conveying revolutionary ideology aimed at a society where a majority, with political potential, could not read or write? The methodological basis of the project and article is R. Barthesʼs Rhetoric of the Image and the analysis is supplemented with other pictorial items (photographs, postage stamps) related to the land reform as well as literary pieces and scientific studies of this historical event.

This study seeks to compare the generic conventions of the Sanskrit ornate epic poem (mahākāvya) with the Longinian notion of the sublime, belonging to the literary-rhetorical tradition of the classical (Western) antiquity. It characterizes descriptions of mountains and oceans employed in the mahākāvya genre within the theoretical context of the “grand narrative” specified by Sanskrit literary theorists. The practice of Sanskrit poets characterized in this way is compared with the prerequisites of grand style, understood by Pseudo-Longinus as an actualization of the proto-aesthetic category of the sublime.

In the past few years there has been a growing interest in depicting permanently sieged strongholds, secluded last stands, or quarantined asylums within a post-apocalyptic world so as to strengthen the sense of the ultimate isolation and disconnection from the desolated world outside. The majority of those narratives share a similar world-model, featuring an over-crowded, fortified refuge and its ruler turning a utopian sanctuary into a dystopian confinement. This means that the society in such a world faces two actual threats: one imminent, be it a zombie apocalypse, bands of scavengers, or epidemic that forces people to take refuge – and the other one, concealed, which reveals itself when everything seems to be under control.

This article considers the most important philosophical work of Stanisław Brzozowski, ideas. Introduction to the Philosophy of Historical Maturity, as an opportunity to examine the question of what leads some philosophers to set out their philosophical standpoint in the form of a biography of thought. This article poses the following questions: Why is it that an author’s biography should subordinate reality to philosophical thought? Do we expect an author to render an account of what kind of man he is, and by what path he came to his convictions concerning every philosophical theory? I would like to demonstrate that it is philosophy that needs biographical testimony. Thus biography becomes a place where man develops some orientation in reality,based on past actions that were recorded,the values assigned to events, the significance given to concrete aspects of his own life, and a multitude of minute facts.By creating himself in the biography of his own thought as a particular character, he builds a foundation for himself to plan the future.

The intention of this article is provide a preliminary comparison of two areas of music which are frequently associated with one another – in pieces of opinion journalism, in reviews, and sometimes on the stage – however, contrary to superficial intuitions, they differ from each other considerably – not only in their cultural sources and philosophical premise but also in the final sound-related and music-related result, which may be heard during concerts. Both musical trends are a result of ideological transformations within the world of music, but the reasons for which they arose are extremely different. Let this article serve the purpose of posing questions and making an attempt at outlining the differences between World Music and Sound Art.

The interview with Venerable Geshe Lhakdor, the director of LTWA (Library of Tibetan Works and Archives) is the result of the fieldwork on tulkus which I have been carrying out since January of 2018 in India. It forms part of a PhD project, focusing on the question of how the institution of tulku (sprul sku), which is one of the main characteristics of  Tibetan Buddhism, is perceived by Tibetans in exile, in the context of the controversy with the double choosing of the Panchen Lamas. In the paper the interview will be presented with the preceding historical and methodological introduction and then summarized in the commentary.

Wstęp i tłumaczenie: Khalil A. Arab

Wstęp i tłumaczenie: Khalil A. Arab