74703 - IDENTITY-DIALOG-TRUST: THE CULTURE OF COEXISTENCE IN EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

t the end of the module, students are expected to achieve a clear knowledge of how identity does not mean community, to what extent people realize it and how much the battles to preserve the former have led people to lose much of the spirit of the latter. Furthermore, students will become familiar of the challenge that the development of a culture of coexistence can bring in terms of identity, trust and dialogue in post-war, post-soviet and post-modern societies of East-Central Europe as well as of the multicultural heritage of East-Central Europe countries, and particularly of the Višegrad Group, so reach and complex.

Contenuti

We brought down the Berlin wall, we opened up our borders, we popularised the Internet, most of us live in multicultural metropolises. And yet walls remain a familiar experience to the modern European. These are no longer walls running along national borders. The contemporary wall stands in the midst of society, on the same river bank, and it serves to divide confronting cultural identities. The ever-increasing proximity of the Alien, not outside of our world, but within the intimate space reserved for the familiar and the accepted, raises a new wall in which all our fears and inadequacies are sealed. We are realising ever more clearly that identity does not mean community, and that in our battles to preserve the former we have lost much of the spirit of the latter. The problem of modern Europe, which increasingly resembles an archipelago of separate cultures, is not the presence of diversity and differences, but that which CzesławMiłosz had called “connective tissue”. For to cope with this challenge we need to create and develop a culture of coexistence which will bridge identity with dialog and trust, and remake the Alien into the Other. Hence, an opportunity is born for the members of our communities, who speak different languages and have various faiths and cultures, to become one of Us.

How to bridge identity with dialog and trust in post-war, post-soviet and post-modern societies of East-Central Europe? How the multicultural heritage of East-Central Europe countries, reach and complex, can contribute to the European discourse and policy on integration and community building? What kind of philosophical and ethical approach the culture of coexistence demands? How to transmit the philosophy of dialog into praxis of inter-human relationships?

Testi/Bibliografia

1. A Handbook of Dialogue. Trust and Identity. Ed. K. Czyżewski. Sejny 2011
2. Handbook of Forgiveness. Ed. E.L. Worthington. Routledge, New York 2005
3. Rethinking Milan Kundera and the Idea of Central Europe. Ed. L. Donskis. Amsterdam-New York 2012
4. Czesław Miłosz, Native Realm. A Search for Self-Definition. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002
5. Ivo Andrić, The Bridge on the Drina. Tr. L.F.Edwards. University of Chicago Press, 1977.
6. Miłosz – Dialog – Borderland. Ed. K. Czyżewski. Krasnogruda-Sejny 2013
7. Krzysztof Czyżewski, Line of Return: Practicing The Borderland in Dialogue with Czesław Miłosz. “Michigan Quarterly Review”, Vol. XLVI, No.4, Fall 2007
8. Levinas and Buber. Dialogue and Difference. Ed. P. Atterton, M. Calarco, M. Friedman. Pittsburg, 2004
9. Emmanuel Levinas, On Thinking-of-the-Other. New York, 1998
10. Erich Gruen, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity. Princeton and Oxford, 2011
11. Medea. Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art. Ed. J.J. Clauss, S.I. Johnstone. Princeton, New Jersey, 1997
12. Elizabeth S. Belfiore, Murder Among Friends. Violation of Philia in Greek Tragedy. New York-Oxford, 2000
13. Richard Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters. Interpreting Otherness. London-New York, 2003
14. Building a Better Bridges. Muslims, Christians, and the Common Good. Ed. M. Ipgrave, Washington 2008
15. Krzysztof Czyżewski, The Culture of Coexistence in the Longue Durée. On Practicing the Ethos of the Borderland [in:] Reconciliation in Bloodlands. Assessing Actions and Outcomes in Contemporary Central-Eastern Europe. Ed. J. Kurczewski. Frankfurt am Main 2014
16. Krzysztof Czyżewski, Europe: Crossing Borders, Facing Contradictions [in:] Remixing Europe: Migrants, Media, Representation, Imaginary. European Culture Foundation, Amsterdam 2014
17. Krzysztof Czyżewski, Culture and Solidarity. “New Eastern Europe”, No 3, 2014
18. Krzysztof Czyżewski, The Path of the Borderland. Sitka Center [USA], 2001
19. Ian Watson, Fundacja Pogranicze: Performance and the Polish Borderlands [in:] “About Performance”, No.9 (2009, Sydney): Playing Politics: Performance, Community and Social Change. Ed. P. Dwyer, G. McAuley

Metodi didattici

Oral presentations in class

Attandance

Interactivity

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

Examination based on a written essay

Strumenti a supporto della didattica

Conversatorium

Film and multi media presentations

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Krzysztof Lech Czyzewski