Dziewiętnastowieczne wydania polskich przekładów pism Świętej Teresy z Ávili

From the 1840’s to the end of the 19th century more than twenty editions of Polish translations of texts by Saint Teresa of Ávila, as well as the ones attributed to her, were released. It was attempted to popularise her works, information about her life and thought, as well as the cult of her, knowledge about Christian mysticism and the revival of religious life. Two important bibliographies presenting the reception of Teresa in Poland: one by Stefania Ciesielska-Borkowska (1939) and the other one by Benignus Wanat (1972) require complementing and corrections, which should find reflection in contemporary editions and catalogues. The paper presents all the editions of works by Teresa (fragments, all works, collections of works, as well as paraphrases), released in Polish in the 19th-century books and periodicals. It corrects the mistakes in bibliographical descriptions, which result from mistakes in the publications themselves, as well as errors in attribution. It refers to the authorship of anonymous translations and their undetermined bases, it characterises briefly the environments in which Saint Teresa’s works were translated and published. It presents the religious, literary, social and scientific purposes accompanying the texts by Teresa, as well as translation, editorial and ideological assumptions. It shows the editions of Saint Teresa’s texts in translations or paraphrases by: Sebastian Nucerin, Ignacy Hołowiński, Nina Łuszczewska, Eleonora Ziemięcka, Michał Bohusz Szyszko, Eleonora z Paprockich Szemiothowa, Zygmunt Krasiński, Lucjan Siemieński, Ignacy Domeyko, Karmela Wiktima od Jezusa (Amalia Zenopolska), Tadeusz Miciński, Henryk Piotr Kossowski, as well as anonymous translators.

Pessimism and Optimism in the Debate on Climate Change: A Critical Analysis

In the debate on climate change commentators often express pessimistic or optimistic views. We see this mainly in the media and popular literature, but also in various academic fields. The aim of this paper is to investigate different kinds of pessimistic and optimistic views put forward in this debate and suggest explanations of the diversity of views. The paper concludes that pessimism and optimism may concern, for example, climate change as an unmitigated or poorly mitigated process, mitigation of climate change or specific measures of mitigation. These aspects are important to distinguish, because a person can be pessimist concerning climate change as an unmitigated or poorly mitigated process and optimist concerning mitigation of climate change, and be pessimist concerning one specific mitigation measure and optimist concerning another. It is suggested that the diversity of pessimistic and optimistic views is due to the uncertainty of scientific climate models and the influence of evaluative and ideological assumptions.

The problem of history in digital activism: Ideological narratives in digital activism literature

The past decades have generated a wealth of literature on digital activism. Even so, the phenomenon has been little historicised. This paper engages in a deconstructionist exercise on historical references in digital activism literature towards exploring implicit meaning-making in a symbolic-interactionist tradition. It identifies four distinct narratives: 1) a technology narrative [activism as technology-driven]; 2) a communications narrative [activism on the basis of communication options]; 3) an online-off-line narrative [activism based on an online-off-line dichotomy]; and 4) an engagement narrative [activism based on its affordances for public engagement]. The paper argues that these narratives contribute to a distinct, polysemic, and paradoxical understanding of digital activism as a phenomenon that is technologically driven (technological determinism), and both distinct to and enmeshed with traditional activism. In doing so, this narrative analysis shows a range of underlying ideological assumptions in digital activism study and conceptualisation, which informs how the phenomenon is understood today.

Monastycyzm w świecie duchowości ponowoczesnej. Organizacja Morska zakonem religijnym Kościoła scjentologicznego

Article synthetically describes the history, assumptions and a short description of the Religious Order of the Scientology – Sea Organisation, which was founded in 1967, thirteen years after when in Los Angeles was registered the first institution of the Church of Scientology. The text of the article is based on three basic types of sources: literature, memoirs of former members of the order and the relationship of current active monks, the information from whom was received at query time research at the Ideal Orgs (headquarters) of the Church in Spain and Hungary in 2016. Apart from presenting the image of contemporary monasticism in terms of the Scientology also is explained the basic religious concepts, that relevant for this Ron Hubbard’s cult. The last part of the article is devoted to the symbolism of the Sea Org, which is really a reflection of the ideological assumptions that entity.

Notes toward a Postsecular History of Modern British Secularization

This article argues that British historiography's secularization debate is largely misconceived, being enmeshed in secular ideological assumptions inherited from the West's secular revolution of the 1960s. It therefore introduces an alternative, postsecular paradigm for understanding British secularization, which conceptualizes secularity as an ideological culture in its own right, religion as secularity's othering category, and secularization as the positive dissemination and enactment of secularity. British Christianity declined gradually from around 1900, but widespread secularization in this positive sense could only happen once British public discussion had embraced secularity's ideological framework, which it did in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Before the mid-1950s, British discussion had routinely adhered to a “Christian civilization” metanarrative, which insisted that “religion” is essential to long-term social stability, such that “secularization” is a regrettable step backward in human development. Yet in the late 1950s and early 1960s British discussion abruptly embraced secularity's rival metanarrative, which states that “religion” is a primordial condition unnecessary in “advanced” societies, such that “secularization” is an irreversible step forward in human development. This conceptual revolution was contingent, culturally specific, and importantly influenced by radical rereadings of Christian eschatology. Nonetheless, it created both the secular revolution of the 1960s, and the ideological framework within which the British secularization debate continues to be conducted today.

Introduction

Identifying the fact that conservative political media often produces confusion or bewilderment for viewers who encounter it but do not share its ideological assumptions—How could anyone believe this nonsense? is a likely refrain—the Introduction makes clear that incoherence is a constitutive feature of hysterical political discourse. This manner of political discourse seeks to perpetuate a feeling of affective turmoil for its intended audience as a means to deflect attention from more concrete or productive forms of democratic disagreement or exchange. The Introduction likewise argues that hysterical discourse can be understood as an extension of several key terms and concepts taken up in the work of such prominent political theorists as Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Jodi Dean, and Jacques Rancière.

Artificial intelligence and rationalized unaccountability: Ideology of the elites?

In this Connexions essay, we focus on intelligent agent programs that are cutting-edge solutions of contemporary artificial intelligence (AI). We explore how these programs become objects of desire that contain a radical promise to change organizing and organizations. We make sense of this condition and its implications through the idea of ‘rationalized unaccountability’ that is an ideological state in which power and control are exerted algorithmically. While populist uses of new technologies receive growing attention in critical organization and management studies, we argue that rationalized unaccountability is the hidden end of a spectrum of populism affecting societies across the world. Rather than populism of the masses, this is a populism of elites. This essay lays out some premises for critical scholars to expose the workings of intelligent agent programs and to call into question the problematic ideological assumptions that they are grounded in.

Case Studies–Political and Non-Political Cartoons

The genre of political cartoons purports to present a wittily critical visual or visual-plus-written-verbal commentary on politicians and states of affairs in the world. The genre is thereby of high interest for critical discourse analysts, as it lays bare a community’s ideological assumptions and does so in a pithy, easily accessible form. Moreover, the genre can get away with proposing ideas that, when presented in the verbal mode, would be unacceptably offensive or crude. From an RT perspective, it is clear that since cartoons typically appear in specific newspapers and magazine, cartoonists have a fairly precise idea of the target audience to whom they want to be optimally relevant. The chapter outlines the conventions of the cartoon genre in some detail, then examines four political and two non-political cartoons in the light of their communicative and informative intentions, aspects of reference assignment, implicated premises, and explicatures and implicatures. Other aspects that are briefly addressed are cartoons’ artist-dependent style, need for stereotypical depiction and caricaturization, deployment of metaphors, and loose use of visuals.

Relevance Theory and Mediated Mass-Communication

The examples analyzed in classic RT pertain to face-to-face communication, that is, a situation in which one communicator speaks to a single addressee standing next to her. The shift from this situation to mass-communication affects several dimensions of RT. In this chapter, the central RT tenet that relevance is always relevance to an individual is discussed in light of the fact that mass-communicative audiences consist of (very) many individuals. Concepts affected pertain to the recognition and fulfillment of the communicative and informative intention and to the cognitive environment (≈ background knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, etc.) of the numerous individuals in the envisaged audience, who after all may not share the ideological assumptions of the communicator. Moreover, mass-communication is usually mediated. Some of the technical, financial, institutional, and ideological consequences of mediated mass-communication for RT are sketched.

The Message It Is Not: The Work of the Medium Known as Documentary

This article is a brief discussion of Pooja Rangan’s book Immediations, highlighting her argument for the need to analyze carefully the audiovisual materialities and ideological assumptions of documentary as a medium.