No. 11 (2022): The Sense of an Ending and the Imagination of the End: Apocalypse, Disaster and Messianic Time

Apocalyptical visions go beyond Christian eschatology and permeate our present imagination. Not as much with the already bygone symbolism or the terror of bloody carnage, as with the vague sense of an ending, fuelled by historical conditions – the Holocaust, nuclear crisis, or more contemporary global threats of viral pandemic or climate change.

Renewed interest in eschatological narratives is visible in philosophy, literature and art both in recalling or reinterpreting its tradition and in feeding on the radical instance of an ending. According to Derrida, the key hermeneutic undertaking of literature lies in postponing the apocalyptic horizon. Blanchot sees in a disaster a radical change that introduces different logic into our thought and writing. Both of them dwell upon two crucial features brought by the apocalyptical imagination – language and time. End-directed orientation spread between an individual and collective, past and present, religious and secular, becomes an organizing principle of collective thinking and a field of a search for a new language.

In the upcoming volume, we gather various voices concerning contemporary discursive practices embracing the topic of the sense of an ending and imagination of the end.

Conception and academic editing of the issue: Ewa Niedziałek

List of reviewers for the issue

Original Table of Contents
(articles’ titles in original language, unrelated to the user interface language)

• Thematic Section
  • Jolanta Sujecka; Introductory Comments
  • Ewa Niedziałek; The Sense of an Ending and the Imagination of the End: Apocalypse, Disaster and Messianic Time
  • Damian Kubik; The Second Death of Dubrovnik: Selected Testimonies from the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century on the Fall of the Republic in the Light of Lujo Vojnović’s Historiosophical Conception
  • Chiara Carmen Scordari; Mending a Frail Humankind: Remedial Hermeneutics and Messianic Anthropology in Joseph Soloveitchik
  • Francine Rochford; Climate Change Litigation: Vulnerable Children and a Duty of Care
  • Stephen Ogheneruro Okpadah; Engaging Cinema in Environmental Crisis: A Paradigm of Documentary Films of the Niger Delta
  • Cringuta Irina Pelea; Mirroring Cultural Fear, Anxiety and Dystopia in American Cinematography: The Movie “A.I.” (2001)
  • Magda Dolińska-Rydzek; The Antichrist and His Plot Against Russia: Conspiracy Theories and Eschatology
  • Tetiana M. Brovarets; Apocalyptic Motifs on Century-Old Ukrainian Rushnyks Through Today’s Digital Folklore Communication
• Discussion. Presentations. Book Reviews
  • Editors; Professor Jerzy Skowronek Award (27th Edition)
  • Ivana Hadjievska; Book Review: Naum Trajanovski, Petar Todorov, Biljana Volchevska and Ljupcho S. Risteski (eds.), "Cultures and Politics of Remembrance: Southeast European and Balkan Perspectives". Skopje: forum ZFD, 2021, 132 pp. ISBN 978-608-4956-04-4
  • Izabela Olszewska; Book Review: Tomasz Kamusella, "Words in Space and Time: A Historical Atlas of Language Politics in Modern Central Europe". Budapest: Central European University Press, 2022, 289 pp. ISBN: 978-963-386-417-3

The project Colloquia Humanistica 11 financed from the funds of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Poland under the “Development of Scientific Journals” programme, pursuant to the Regulation of the Minister of Education and Science of 3 August 2021 (Journal of Laws of 2021, item 1514); contract No. RCN/SP/0420/2021/1 (22 December 2022).