Modernism, Mysticism and the Pursuit of Freedom - Bringing the initial instinct of the Modernists to its fulfilment in the model of the Christian mystic

While one can certainly debate about the forms Modernism (in the artistic sense) manifested itself in and what actually qualified as Modernism, one cannot deny that the desire for freedom was one of its underlying tenets. In the 21st century it would seem however that the desire for freedom has not been satiated. In the following essay I will explore whether emancipating art from a moral authority achieved the freedom modernist artists so deeply desired and I will question whether severing himself from objective truth the artist was allowed to fully thrive. Comparing Modernist concept’s (Stream of consciousness, that art should reflect reality and the emphasis on subjectivity etc.) with the fundamentals of Christian mysticism (i.e. the interior life) and by reconciling subjective experience with objective truth through the use of St John Paul II’s philosophical anthropology – I hope to pose an alternative path to satiate, truly satiate, the Modernist’s thirst for freedom.

PSYCHOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES OF M.E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN AND F.M. DOSTOEVSKY

In his novel "The Golovlyov Family" Saltykov-Shchedrin creates the image of the protagonist, whose behavior and the peculiarities of interior life coincide with the description of mind structure and interior life dynamics of a person in Freud's psychoanalysis. Examining the mechanism of unconscious lie Saltykov-Shchedrin shows how a person who is unconsciously lying to himself can start living in a world of fantasy and even come to necessity to eliminate any ideas about real life. Dostoevsky in "Notes from Underground" considers that an unconscious liar lost in the labyrinths of his own lies can end up losing the sense of self.

Now I Can See the Moon

Contemplative education dawns in the 21st century with great possibility. Thus far, the field resonates with life and promises to expand American educational pedagogies with ideas of new epistemologies, dynamics, and languaging around why, how, and whom we educate. Much work has been done on the analysis of the threads that may inform contemplative studies, from our own culture and that of others, and this article adds to that body of work, exploring ways that western pedagogical strategies might inform contemplative education, most specifically in terms of purpose, the interior life of faculty, and the relationship with students.

Temple-related Poetics of Goncharov’s Meta-Novel

The article justifies the representation of Goncharov’s temple-related tetralogy, which includes “A Common Story”, “Oblomov”, “The Precipice” and “Frigate ‘Pallada’”. Temple-related and liturgic principles of the tetralogy are defined as the measure of its structural and conceptual integrity. Paths of heroes in the novels under discussion lie within the “temple-related model” and should be evaluated in line with the axiology of this model. The storyline associated with Alexander Aduev is considered as “vulgar travel”, “pseudo-pilgrimage” to Saint-Petersburg, the city which became “Russian Europe”. The novel “Frigate ‘Pallada’” focuses on the peculiar “narrative” status of the hero, and this focus allows to combine “inner” and “extra” storylines. The novel highlights certain changes in paths of hero who moves backward to “the great Motherland” instead of moving forward to “the progress”. Concerning the novel “Oblomov”, one can notice that this writing justifies the point associated with “dynamics” of the hero’s “interior life” who travels inside and reorients himself from the West to the East. The article considers “The Precipice” (“Obryv”) as Goncharov’s most “pedalogical” novel with its focus on “Russian brinks”. Boris Raisky ran the gamut from an amateur artist to the artist — “man of the soil”. The novel emphasizes the significance of territories of “provincial Russia” struggling to “heal misguided paths” and to eliminate “precipices” of Russian History.

Caring for pobres dementes:Madness, Colonization, and the Hospital de San Hipólito in Mexico City, 1567–1700

ABSTRACTThis article examines the early history of the Hospital de San Hipólito in Mexico City, which delivered charitable care and basic medical services to a vulnerable category of colonial subjects known as “pobres dementes,” or mad paupers. In spite of the vast and robust literature on the history of madness and its institutions, surprisingly little is known about this institution, which, founded in 1567, holds a claim to being the first hospital of the Americas to specialize in the care and custody of the mentally disturbed. The article draws on archival sources and biographies of the hospital's founder to reconstruct San Hipólito's origins, activities, patient population, and interior life. It asks how the hospital registered the transfer and adaptation of institutions, ideas, and practices from the Old World to the New. It argues, ultimately, that San Hipólito served as an imperfect tool of colonial governance—and that it did so less through exerting control over a multiracial, recalcitrant, and marginal group of colonial society than through the reproduction of charitable practices and ideas that lent legitimacy to Catholicism and Hapsburg models of paternal authority.

The politics of staying behind the frontline of coronavirus

Intended as a contribution to the Waiting in Pandemic Times project Collection in response to COVID-19, this short theoretical paper views the coronavirus crisis in terms of its unpredictable effects on the interior life of the National Health Service (NHS) workforce. Written immediately following the suspension (due to the pandemic) of an ethnographic investigation of waiting in a general practice in London, it tracks the first signs that working definitions of time would struggle to survive the onset of a temporality of acute crisis in the NHS. The paper considers what it might mean for healthcare practitioners at this particular moment in the NHS’s history to be living through an experience of ‘the ordinary’ breaking down. It also follows hints of new temporal modes of care appearing during this same period when one kind of crisis in the NHS has been put on hold, and another (the crisis of coronavirus) is just getting underway.

The politics of staying behind the frontline of coronavirus

Intended as a contribution to the Waiting in Pandemic Times project Collection in response to COVID-19, this short paper views the coronavirus crisis in terms of its unpredictable effects on the interior life of the National Health Service (NHS) workforce. Based in part on ethnographic observations from the ‘frontline’ of the NHS during the hours that immediately followed a first suspected case of coronavirus at a general practice in London, it charts the collision of the ensuing crisis with working definitions of the nature of time in its relation to care. It considers what it might mean for healthcare practitioners at this particular moment in the NHS’s history to be living through an experience of ‘the ordinary’ breaking down. The paper also follows hints of new temporal modes of care appearing during this same period when one kind of crisis in the NHS has been put on hold, and another (the crisis of coronavirus) is just getting underway.

The Jewish Blogosphere and the Heretical Counterpublic

This chapter ethnographically traces the contemporary crisis of authority to the Jewish blogosphere or “Jblogosphere” in the mid-2000s, which created an alternative, anonymous heretical public both online and in person. It analyzes the public that referenced an earlier crisis of authority, the Jewish Enlightenment from mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries in Europe. The chapter describes the generation of Jewish men that were exposed to the European Enlightenment and used innovations in print culture to take on traditional Judaism and its leadership. It looks into the connection between secret life-changing doubt and the internet that began roughly in 2002 or 2003 when disillusioned Modern Orthodox and ultra–Orthodox Jews began to blog. It also discusses the Jblogosphere that gave anonymous public voice to a range of private interior life-changing doubt.