Volume XXIX (2024), no. 1

The article is an in depth investigation, which brings face to face two almost unknown portraits belonging to the Transylvanian heritage. They represent unique traces, two instances as an introspective glimpse into the history of an aristocratic family that became extinct more than 100 years ago. The genealogy of the Korda family is quite intricate, thus, virtually infinite connections begin to unfold, bringing together people, places, stories, houses, objects which sometimes are surprisingly scattered in space and time. The research is contextualised within the broader issue of heritage assets in contemporary Romania.

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In a world overwhelmed by emerging technologies, in which the idea that humanity has lost its “authenticity” is increasingly more widespread, the literary narration that explores the territories beyond the “human” realm becomes an excellent laboratory for conducting observations on the posthuman concerns. Thus, in the final wave of the contemporary Japanese literature – covering the first two decades of the 21^st century (2001-2021) –, seven novels have the word neko (‘cat’, ‘tomcat’) in their titles, written by Takashi Hiraide, Yōko Ogawa, Genki Kawamura, Makoto Shinkai, Naruki Nakagawa, Hiro Arikawa, Sōsuke Natsukawa. These Japanese novels have been translated into several dozens of languages, circling the globe and encountering, in their path, other books dedicated to the aforementioned feline. The present study aims to analyse these Japanese postmodern narrations from a zoopoetic-hermeneutic angle and to emphasise the cat-character’s role as the social marker of a “private space” shared by the human and his animal companion – which, naturally, is part of the “public space” of society –, connected to the present time of postmodern contemporaneity, as a means for “survival” in an alienated urban world. As part of an obvious intertextuality, the cat-character seems to dominate the gallery of non-human animal characters from the contemporary Japanese literature. Postmodernity, by its own means, adds to the study of the relation between the human animal and the non-human animal, which has previously been approached predominantly from an anthropological or a cultural-historical angle.

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Drawing on David Joselit’s critique of modernity in relation to the proprietary mindset that regulates the production and circulation of art on the art market, this article focuses on a few examples of artists employing gestures of displacement around techniques involving collage and montage – in various fields of expression from performance art, theatre, photography, installation to mixed media and sculpture and in relation to their spaces – to declassify the dominant perceptions of the real and history by exposing the arbitrary nature of social hierarchies and giving voice to those who are traditionally silenced. We will observe how these different approaches tackle, disrupt and offer an alternative to the commodified modes of spectatorship that in both the space of art and of the city (embodying and reflecting the mechanisms of modernity) perform a systematic dispossession of the other.

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Founded in 1909 by W. Doegen in Berlin, the Sound Archive (Lautarchiv) was enriched during the First World War with valuable texts and folk songs recorded on discs and wax cylinders or recorded on paper. The research took place in 32 of the 175 prisoner-of-war camps of the Allied Powers, which covered the territory of Germany at that time. The prisoners came from European, Asian, African countries and the United States of America, and the research was carried out by a team of 50 German specialists in the languages spoken in those countries. Among them are three camps with prisoners from the Kingdom of Romania and from Bessarabia located in the perimeter of the cities of Chemnitz, Mannheim and Lamsdorf. The study presents some of the results obtained by the professors M. Friedwagner and H. Urtel in the research of the Romanian prisoners in those camps.

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This article delves into the dynamic landscape of contemporary ecological discourse, focusing on the intersection between anthropos and the environment—a complex interplay shaping their relationship. Within this context, non-places emerge as seemingly unnoticeable spaces, deserving comprehensive investigation in the evolving ecological rhetoric. Non-places, often overlooked in conventional analyses, play a profound role in shaping our interconnected existence with the environment. In response to this imperative, the present study endeavors to delve into the intricate layers of these non-places, employing the conceptual lens provided by Timothy Morton's hyperobject and ecological thought theories. By adopting Morton's theoretical framework, the investigation seeks to unravel the multifaceted dimensions of non-places, shedding light on their profound implications for the ongoing evolution of ecological consciousness. It advocates for a comprehensive and responsible perspective that transcends the boundaries of conventional approaches. In this way, the contents that delineate the complex field of ecology can be reduced to simpler meanings, which, although not organically leading to more optimistic perspectives, can however, revitalize and guide the spectrum of contemporary ecological discourse toward real possibilities for achieving sustainability goals and a genuine connection to what paradoxically has always been closest to us—namely, the biotic community and its constituent elements.

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The present study aims to explore the linguistic journey of polite communication in the last two centuries. For this purpose, the article scrutinises German and Romanian professional correspondence and identifies the transformations letter writing has undergone by defining the most relevant patterns of politeness: semantic typology, idiosyncratic language, epistemic and deontic modalities. We conclude that polite interactions unfold in a multitude of eloquent and expressive formulations in earlier letters, whereas modern writings orientate themselves towards the mundane, seek simplicity and are stripped off from ornaments and redundant formulations.

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