Brolly

Germany and the Cultural History of Post-World-War-II Europe

2026-05-20T11:13:12+00:00

Polychronis Enepekides (1917-2014), an Austrian historian of Greek origin, contends that Second World War worldview and its aesthetics in regard to international understanding and forgiving reconciliations in the aftermath faced a tremendous recession. Female suffrage, a series of profound changes and reforms in the constitutions and legal systems, and a spirit of civic universalism declared a New World order imbued with American principles in post-war Western Europe. Nevertheless, society retained its role of reasserting pre-existing class divisions. A conservative and even conformist attitude in daily activities during the 1950s reflected gender within societal norms. The family was prioritised over other aspirations of liberation and sexual freedom, even though the latter was performed in or away from marital status relationships. The world and civic order imposed by national, social institutions and communities, such as education and the churches or other religious communities, defined new social and interpersonal behavioural norms in the long reconstruction process and resorted to a new normality.

Western Europe was defined as a class society even after 1945. The middle class was prevalent amidst the Cold War, and economy, political life, and the resources of the state were all aligned in ways that served the interests of the middle class, which itself was expanding and changing as a consequence of processes of economic and social modernisation (Conway 2020, 202).

Enepekides highlights the aesthetics in terms of public address: modernism, gender, class and mass culture, post-modern diplomacy, state order and post-war narrative in Western democracy. In this common ground, one can observe his constant concern with the interface that belies the international links shared between modern and post-modern world (both Asian and European) in terms of geopolitical alliances and transnational cultural interconnections.

Between Faith and the Heavens

2026-04-11T15:12:31+00:00

The study examines how the collision of ideas and traditions in astronomy between Catholic missionaries and Safavid scholars shaped intercultural relations and strengthened mutual exchanges. Early modern period travel and missionary accounts indicate that astronomy held a prominent place within Safavid education and scholarly culture, shaping both intellectual exchange and diplomatic encounters. This study highlights how Catholic missionaries employed scientific knowledge as a form of soft diplomacy. They introduced innovations and played a key role in circulating scientific instruments that served as tools of knowledge exchange and cultural negotiation. Focusing on missionary correspondence and visual artefacts, this article argues that the contributions of Catholic missionaries to the scientific development of the Safavid Empire have been overlooked, as they not only participated in exchanges but also introduced changes in the characteristics of instruments. By bringing undervalued materials to light and revealing cross-cultural Catholic-Safavid exchanges, the article aims to offer new perspectives on the history of science and visual culture.

Poetically Man Persists

2026-04-15T22:30:33+00:00

This article examines the quest for wholeness of being amidst an alienated and disenchanted world, and how this search unfolds in the poetry of Wallace Stevens and Rainer Maria Rilke. It situates both writers within a shared concern for the question of being and humanity’s inclination toward a fullness of existence, an existence wherein the poet apprehends life as an aesthetic phenomenon, or as a fundamentally immanent experience which is replete with a superabundant being, in the Rilkean sense. Yet, the stately impoverished condition of man is what often denies him any vestige of fullness. The article extends this through concepts advanced by literary critics and philosophers, such as Max Weber’s Disenchantment and Nietzsche’s “life as an aesthetic phenomenon”. It also reveals how the topos of disenchantment unfolds in their poetry, and how the search is sought through the visible reality as well as the invisible space of the spirit.

The Misunderstood Nietzsche

2026-05-20T11:28:29+00:00

The Nietzschean master-slave philosophy is reduced by neoliberal capitalism into the dialectic of mediocrity and excellence. The slave is represented as the underachieving subject who evades the struggles of institutional growth, while the master is portrayed as the one whose authority and nobility emerge from productivity and achievement. Contemporary society consequently equates master morality with high performers and ruling elites who naturally dominate slaves due to their elevated positions of power. However, this perspective fails to consider how neoliberal capitalism’s logic of power, based on achievement and perpetual optimisation, is inherently reactive. Thus, I propose that this logic establishes an organised framework operating on slave morality. By redefining the master and slave dynamic not as permanent positions but as active and reactive forces that can manifest at any locus, I perform a critique against the reduction of the master-slave into simplistic dialectical relations. Hence, I argue that the neoliberal notions of the master and the slave are both based on slave morality. My critique is achieved by exploring the complex relationship between rest and struggle – showing how each can embody either active or reactive forces in a Deleuzian sense.

Modal Semantics of Thought Experiments

2026-05-20T11:36:46+00:00

In this paper, we discuss a couple of nonclassical logics and their application in the analysis and interpretation of thought experiments (TE, e.g. Tamar Gendler, Roy Sorensen, Ronald Laymon), particularly modal logic. After discussing pros and cons (e.g. W. Van O. Quine) of modal logic, we opt for Saul Kripke’s frame semantics, possibly described as possible world semantics (PWS), involving a set of (possible) worlds, considered as abstract entities (e.g. Kit Fine 2017), as pictured by search engines like Google and Baidu, an accessibility relation, and a satisfiability relation. On retaining principle of bivalence, we provide for underpinnings of the methodology of TE Matrix, whereby the possible worlds (PW) of TE arguments (premises and conclusions) pick out accessible PW (as from axioms to principles) unto the argument is both formally and informally logically validated (i.e. logical inference is valid, premises and conclusions are true—so, argument is sound) and we don’t need to prescribe any forcing formal validation function (Descriptive Semantics View).

Bakundu Traditional Authority System

2026-05-20T11:55:42+00:00

This article examines the precolonial Bakundu traditional authority system as a distinctive expression of African democracy. It argues that Bakundu political organisation was based on collective deliberation, moral accountability and a participatory ethos that anticipated many of the principles associated with modern democratic governance. Drawing from archival sources, oral interviews and scholarly interpretations, the study analyses the institutional structure of the Bakundu polity made up of the Mowele Mboka (village head), Janea ra Mboka (traditional council), and Bekali (secret societies) – to reveal how they functioned as instruments of justice, conflict resolution, and community cohesion. Far from being autocratic or primitive, Bakundu governance represented a dynamic system of checks and balances rooted in the people’s collective will. The article concludes that the Bakundu model exemplifies the participatory, consultative and moral foundations of African democracy before colonial disruptions.

A Bhartiya Vision in International Relations

2025-11-08T00:59:45+00:00

The ‘Indian Knowledge System’ (IKS) is a collection of intellectual, moral, political, and spiritual beliefs that have been passed down through the ages. These structures are not just old things; they are important frameworks that may help us understand and deal with the complexities of human interaction, including international relations. IKS offers a new way to look at statecraft, diplomacy, global government and world politics. Its values are closely linked to the goals of world peace, multilateralism, bilateral cooperation, co-existence and sustainable development, and they are in line with the problems that the international system is facing today. The paper expresses how the IKS gives India a distinct intellectual history that shapes its foreign policy and teaches us how to connect ancient knowledge with modern diplomatic techniques. This heritage includes Chanakya’s Arthashastra, which is about strategic realism, to ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, which says that ‘the world is one family’. This combination helps nations better understand global dynamics and contributes to a more balanced and peaceful international order. The study engages with the Saptanga Theory, Sukra Niti, the Buddhist Circuit and India’s soft power perspective, Lord Krishna’s diplomatic views, Hinduism and cultural diplomacy, as well as Dharma–Janana approaches to international relations.

Curator Beyond Protocol

2026-05-20T10:59:42+00:00

Keynote lecture during the workshop Artificial Intelligence in Health, Science and Society: From Data to Responsibility, ‘Gr. T. Popa’ University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iasi, 8 May 2026. Event organised under the initiative of MARK AI INTEGRATOR as part of CONGRESSIS 2026: Decoding the Language of Life.

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Curare: to care, to attend, to be responsible before any structure of rule or system takes form. From this root, two trajectories emerged: to cure, the impulse to restore and stabilise what is at risk, and curator, the one who selects and organises meaning within an overwhelming field of possibilities. From museums to archives, and now within knowledge systems shaped by computation, these trajectories start to converge.

As AI expands across medicine, research, and knowledge production, roles dissolve into automation. Protocols replace decision, while judgment is redistributed. Outcomes no longer arise from a single act but unfold across processes, where responsibility becomes less visible and more diffuse—the They (das Man).

If intervention diminishes, one might expect responsibility to recede. Instead, it intensifies. Care, in its phenomenological meaning, remains the integrative structure of being, although now mediated differently. What disappears is not work, but unreflected work. What returns is judgment. The future does not eliminate responsibility—it concentrates it.

You probably don’t expect this. But here is my claim: Curator is the job of the future—a transversal role of the future.

The Curator does not simply process what systems produce, but selects, holds, and decides what matters within excess—with care. In medicine, this means the patient is not reduced to a dataset. In research, that knowledge is not flattened into availability. In both, care ought not to vanish into the They. The Curator selects within abundance without reducing it, resisting the anonymity of what “one does”.

Curare reappears thus as a unified gesture, where to cure and to curate draw together, and responsibility is re-situated without dispersal.

How AI will Change the Entire Structure of Civilisation

2026-05-20T11:06:59+00:00

This paper examines how AI’s rapidly advancing technologies will fundamentally restructure global civilisation and render the traditional, employment-driven design of education obsolete. With AI projected to replace the majority of human labour within this century, societies will face unprecedented and permanent unemployment across future generations.

The social consequences of this shift, loss of purpose, declining self-respect, rising social disorder, and the expansion of AI-driven surveillance, demand a reconsideration of the type of citizens education must now cultivate. The current school model, historically engineered to produce two classes of citizens (managers and managed) through selective grading and language-based performance, is shown to rest on misconceptions about intelligence and to avoid the explicit teaching of reasoning skills. As AI assumes economic functions, this model will no longer sustain societal stability.

The paper argues for a radical redesign of education: replacing employment-oriented curricula with subjects that develop reason, ethical understanding, behavioural discipline, and social responsibility. Examinations and job-streaming will be replaced by a universal pathway culminating in university- level enlightenment. By teaching students the foundations of rational inquiry, such as Aristotle’s Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, from the earliest years, education can prepare future citizens to coexist responsibly within an AI-integrated civilisation. Only through this transformation can societies maintain harmony in a largely worker-less world shaped by intelligent machines.

Welcoming the Unwelcomely in Ray Bradbury’s “Ylla”, “The Earthmen”, and “The Third Expedition”

2025-11-15T05:07:44+00:00

“Ylla”, “The Earthmen”, and “The Third Expedition”, the first three contract stories in Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, have been read as independent narratives whose sequence is largely arbitrary. While understandable, given the collection’s publishing history, this perspective on the stories’ episodic nature overlooks the thematic and structural logic that binds them. This paper proposes a different reading, arguing that these stories, in their current order, follow a narrative arc structured around the evolving dynamics of hospitality and hostility. Drawing on Hospitality Theory, the paper thus reframes this selection as a sequence that traces the progressive overtake of unconditional hospitality by different forms of hostility. The shift in the Martians’ responses to human intrusion, it argues, reflects the notion that hospitality comes to an end when the guest is perceived as a threat that compels the host to react defensively in order to maintain control.

Liminal Posthuman Corporeality

2026-01-22T15:31:46+00:00

The representation of graphic sexual violence and corporeal brutality in Carter’s fiction has sparked harsh feminist criticism about the author’s demythologising project. I wish to expand the frames through which Carter’s engagement with patriarchal topos of the body are perceived, and critically assess the tension revolving around her feminist agenda. Liminality is a state of in-betweenness. Accordingly, a living organism, hanging between life and death, like a zombie, is the site where liminality is more than a mere metaphor; it transforms into a 'corpo-reality'. Even though Carter’s novels cannot be said to feature zombies in the strictest sense of the term, this paper will explore how Carter’s Heroes and Villains epitomises a ‘zombified’ world where the collapse of civilisation exposes not only the fragility of the human body, but also the myth of patriarchal anthropocentrism. The novel portrays spectral figures, living in a fluid interzone between life and death, human and nonhuman. This paper will use the trope of the zombie as a theoretical tool to rethink what it means to be human. My concern is to show that these living-impaired, liminal figures are part of a posthuman world where phallogocentric hierarchies and rational disembodiment are challenged. In her attempt to foreground images of liminality, Carter succeeds in destabilising the dialectical model of Western thought—mind/body, culture/nature, self/other—and proposes an alternative ontology grounded in relational coexistence. I will expand the scope from which to perceive the image of the zombie as a monstrous Other, to include a novel reading, whereby zombification does not mean pessimistic decay, but a possibility of transgression. The theoretical perspectives of posthumanist and corporeal feminist philosophers, particularly Rosi Braidotti, Catherine Hayles and Donna Haraway, provide an appropriate frame for discussing Carter’s investment in reimagining decay not as a destructive process but as a transformative one. This paper hopes to offer a fresh perspective on how bodies are imagined in a post-nuclear age by adopting posthuman and corporeal feminist theoretical insights as a lens through which to formulate my own interpretation of Carter’s novel.

Shadows that Beget

2025-12-07T12:25:19+00:00

This paper examines the convergence of autobiographical fiction, memory, and the fragmented self in Michael Lentz’s Muttersterben (2025) and Schattenfroh (2025); works that radically and fundamentally metamorphosed as well as challenged the boundaries of self-representation and narrative structure, especially in contemporary literature. Positioned within a postmodern macrocosm, predominantly marked by ontological instability and futility, Lentz’s works inhabit a liminal space between autobiography and fiction, oscillating between personal confession and literary performance. Muttersterben is a reflection of the protagonist and Lentz’s intimate confrontation with maternal and individual loss, while Schattenfroh expounds this devastation into an expansively surreal metafictional exploration in which Niemand is imprisoned to inscribe his “brainfluid” into existence. In both of these works, Lentz deconstructs the “autobiographical pact”, transforming writing into an act of remembrance as well as mourning, that simultaneously constructs and negates the self. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of the ethics of self-insertion/narration (Butler, Derrida), Postmemory (Hirsh), and Melancholia (Kristeva), this research situates Lentz’s writings into archives of grief, dispersed into language, form, and narrative performance. The focus would be on showcasing the paradoxical nature of loss as both an impetus of grief and expression, and the very force that disrupts coherence, leading to a rupture of discontinuity despite verbal excess, since giving an account of oneself, however thickly or thinly veiled, is constitutive of absence, belatedness, and lack. This paper contends that the aforementioned works resist closure, challenge fidelity of representation, and posit writing in loss. By relying on grief, individual as well as collective, and using it as an act of aesthetic, narrative, and linguistic invention, Lentz tries to reconstruct memory and self from ruins.

Semantics of Seed

2026-03-31T08:10:44+00:00

Ecofeminists endeavour to address the environmental and feminist issues that have gained significant momentum in our current globalised society. Despite its late start in the 1970s, ecofeminism has provided unique insights and perspectives and enriched the academic sphere with significant contributions. Fundamentally an ecologically grounded political movement, ecofeminism posits that the exploitation of nature and the oppression of women are interconnected strata orchestrated by the male-dominated capitalist worldview. Within this framework, this paper attempts to dissect Margaret Atwood’s dystopian fiction, The Handmaid’s Tale, from an ecofeminist standpoint. By doing so, it also aims to uncover the multifaceted aspects of androcentrism in the dystopic novel on the linguistic and metaphorical level. Additionally, it seeks to explore the contentious phenomenon of aligning nature with women, drawing parallels between the exploitation of women and the despoliation of the natural world. The ultimate goal of this paper is, thus, to encourage readers to acknowledge the interwoven oppressions that prevail in their societies at large and to galvanise public opinion into activism that aims to address and heal these divides.

Authenticity and Appropriation

2025-08-02T04:27:25+00:00

The discourse surrounding authenticity and appropriation in literature, especially within the context of diasporic Asian authors, has garnered significant attention in recent years. With the increasing visibility of Asian voices in contemporary Anglophone fiction, debates about who has the right to tell certain stories and how cultural identities are represented have intensified. These discussions frequently interrogate the boundaries between artistic license and cultural sensitivity, which raises complex questions about representation, authorship and power dynamics. R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface (2023) offers a provocative entry into these debates, as it critically examines the appropriation of Asian cultural narratives by non-Asian writers and the implications of such practices on perceptions of authenticity and identity in literature. This paper aims to analyse how Yellowface navigates the complex interplay of authenticity and appropriation by focusing on its portrayal of the diasporic Asian female identity within a predominantly Western literary framework. It explores how Kuang challenges traditional notions of authorship and cultural representation while grappling with the ethics of storytelling.

“Dhar Obarran”

2025-10-12T13:17:34+00:00

This study translates and analyses Dhar Obarran from a postcolonial perspective. The poem was composed and sung during the Moroccan Rif War (1921-1926), fought by Spain and later France against the Rifis in northern Morocco. Dhar Obarran, a mountain in that region, witnessed one of the most remarkable battles of the conflict. It ended with the victory of the Rifis, leading to the expulsion of Spanish colonisers. Alongside translating from Tarifit into English, the paper discusses the poem’s binarism through a postcolonial lens, focusing on the interplay of life and death as a means of expressing resistance to oppression. It also highlights the roles of nature and religion in shaping this vision, showing how Rifis turned to faith as a final refuge to renew their courage, belief, and hope.