Ewa A. Łukaszyk, Ph.D. Habil.

Born in 1972; transcultural theorist and critic, comparativist. Polyglot and traveller. Former professor at the Jagiellonian University and the University of Warsaw in Poland. 

Fields of interest

THEORETICAL: Transcultural humanities; non-hegemonic universalism(s); trans-religious postsecularism.

ANALYTICAL: Comparative literature; world literature; transcultural writing; Portuguese & Lusophone  studies;  Oriental & Mediterranean studies. Comparative religious studies (with special relevance given to mysticism and non-orthodox religious thought). Cross-cultural relationships in global context; transcolonial studies (understood as the analysis of the process leading to the reconstruction of idiosyncratic aspects of cultures that overcome their post-colonial condition). 

​ARTISTIC: Relations between the theoretical discourse in humanities and the visual arts. Topological inspirations for art and humanities; other borrowings from contemporary mathematics and complexity theory. Interests in aesthetics: void, absence, meaningful omission in literature and art. 

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Aims of research

The main aim of my research is to build a theoretical structure for the field of transcultural universalism, i.e. the dimension in which individual thinkers and creators transgress the imitations inherent to their cultural inscription. My work consists thus in exploring potentialities of experiencing and communicating beyond any particular culture.
While the medieval and early-modern Iberian Peninsula is in the focus of my attention as the intersection of monotheistic traditions and the cradle of many heterodox and mystical insights, I'm searching for the precedents of the contemporary and future transcultural experiences. Such a universal heritage to be treasured in our times results from bringing together the mystical and heterodox texts and traditions around the Mediterranean and worldwide. The outcomes of such an approach should foster the creation of a transversal intellectual and spiritual space in which mystical modalities of religious thinking counterbalance theological and dogmatic distinctions, forming a universal post-secular sphere of communication. 
The concept of symbolic space beyond a culture is resumed in my idiomatic concept of Eremos. This metaphorical Desert brings about a promise of an a-temporal absolute beginning: thinking beyond an established philosophical tradition (of which Nietzsche dreamed among the Töchter der Wüste), speaking beyond a language (as Joyce did in Finnegans Wake), creating art beyond an iconography, encountering God beyond a theology, shortly, living an intellectual and creative life beyond the crooked timber of cultured distinctions. Such a program of breaking through cultural codes and established traditions in order to penetrate into an indiscreet sphere of universal symbols resumes much of the highest spiritual and intellectual striving across European, Mediterranean and global history: from Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Arabi to Ramon Llull and António Vieira in Brazil; from Nietzsche to Deleuze and Guattari in Japan; from Rudolf Otto and Titus Burckhardt in Morocco to contemporary Muslim intellectuals; from Pessoa to Miłosz in his window upon the Pacific. 
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