in search of transgressive and heterodox ideas
The term "history of ideas" has been proposed by the historian Arthur O. Lovejoy. Just like comparative literature, it is one of the disciplines that apparently belong to a past, and whose "death" is repeatedly announced. Its rebirth after the turn of the millennium has been announced under the title of "global history of ideas", since the discipline, as it was traditionally practised, was criticised for its eurocentrism.
The object of studies in this discipline is what remains after the delimitation of various other specialised fields, such as history of philosophy, of literature, of art, etc. Typically, a historian of ideas deals with beliefs and world views (such as that of a 16th-century Italian miller, presented in the famous Carlo Ginzburg's book The Cheese and the Worms), scientific concepts, and more generally, the ways of human thought.
Personally, what attracts me toward this discipline is that it covers all the heterodox viewpoints that stand at the frontier of what is culturally defined. My history of ideas is a history of cultural transgression, be it in religious rituals and liturgies, culturally defined classes and categories (friend and enemy, ours and theirs, domestic and foreign, belonging and non-belonging, etc.), recognised genres of thinking and writing. The research that I realised deals with some specific topics, such as the idea of the unspoiled, pre-lapsarian language (Adamic tongue, the languages of angels). I am also interested in the conceptualisation of otherness across the religious divides in the Mediterranean region, as well as the permeability of such divides. This research deals primarily with the medieval and early-modern thinkers, such as Ramon Llull or Guillaume Postel, transgressors of the cultural and religious divides, such as Anselm Turmeda, later known as Abdallah at-Tarjuman, and the scholars converts of the beginning of the 20th century, such as Titus Burckhardt. The interest in the Islamicate contexts and the perspectives that open "from the opposite side" in the encounter of civilisations permits to inscribe my studies in the new aspiration of non-eurocentric, global history of ideas.
The object of studies in this discipline is what remains after the delimitation of various other specialised fields, such as history of philosophy, of literature, of art, etc. Typically, a historian of ideas deals with beliefs and world views (such as that of a 16th-century Italian miller, presented in the famous Carlo Ginzburg's book The Cheese and the Worms), scientific concepts, and more generally, the ways of human thought.
Personally, what attracts me toward this discipline is that it covers all the heterodox viewpoints that stand at the frontier of what is culturally defined. My history of ideas is a history of cultural transgression, be it in religious rituals and liturgies, culturally defined classes and categories (friend and enemy, ours and theirs, domestic and foreign, belonging and non-belonging, etc.), recognised genres of thinking and writing. The research that I realised deals with some specific topics, such as the idea of the unspoiled, pre-lapsarian language (Adamic tongue, the languages of angels). I am also interested in the conceptualisation of otherness across the religious divides in the Mediterranean region, as well as the permeability of such divides. This research deals primarily with the medieval and early-modern thinkers, such as Ramon Llull or Guillaume Postel, transgressors of the cultural and religious divides, such as Anselm Turmeda, later known as Abdallah at-Tarjuman, and the scholars converts of the beginning of the 20th century, such as Titus Burckhardt. The interest in the Islamicate contexts and the perspectives that open "from the opposite side" in the encounter of civilisations permits to inscribe my studies in the new aspiration of non-eurocentric, global history of ideas.
my essays in history of ideas
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“Congregatio mundi today. New perspectives on Guillaume Postel (1510-1581)”, Primerjalna Knijževnost, no 41, 1/2018, p. 191-199. ISSN 2591-1805
https://ojs.zrc-sazu.si/primerjalna_knjizevnost/article/view/6829 The aim of this paper is to reflect on the perspectives of a critical return to certain aspects of the Postelian heritage, while in the recent decades the figure of this heterodox Renaissance thinker has been apparently downgraded from fascinating to merely secondary. Certainly, his equation between intercultural communication and universal concordia remains generally valid to the present day, even for those who do not share his Adamitic and cabbalistic conceptions of language. On the other hand, his concept of congregator mundi appears as a valuable starting point for the discussion on the role and prerogatives of the intellectual as a mediator between human societies and the transcendent sphere, especially if Postel is read in the light of the recent thought of Giorgio Agamben, re-collocating the intellectual and the cultural critic in the line of the monotheistic prophets. 
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“W poszukiwaniu kondycji transkulturowej. António Vieira i Giorgio Agamben jako czytelnicy Listów Pawłowych” [“In search of the transcultural condition. António Vieira and Giorgio Agamben as the readers of Paul's Epistle to the Romans”], Nowy Człowiek: wizje, projekty, języki, Stanisław Jasionowicz (ed.), Kraków, Wydawnictwo UNUM, 2017, p. 47-59. ISBN 978-83-7643-142-0, e-ISBN 978-83-7643-143-7
António Vieira, a seventeenth-century Portuguese Jesuit, heterodox thinker persecuted by the Inquisition, and missionary working in the Brazilian province of Maranhão, stands comparison with Giorgio Agamben as a reader of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. In spite of dissimilar historical circumstances, both ask the crucial questions concerning universalism and may be regarded as theoreticians of the transcultural condition, understood in this essay as a state of naked, prelapsarian humanity beyond any cultural distinction. This primordial undressed condition – Unbekleidetheit that Agamben found in the theology of Erik Peterson – might become available again due to the passage into the eschatological time, the kairós of Paul. As one can imagine, Vieira might have lacked sufficient intellectual freedom to fully verbalize all the implications of his vision of the spiritual Fifth Empire unifying mankind. These silenced views that the inquisitorial archives failed to transmit to our times may be recuperated, at least as a hypothesis, through the confrontation of the two readers of Paul and the reflection on the possible transcultural horizons as well as shortcomings of Vieira’s visionary thought.
António Vieira, a seventeenth-century Portuguese Jesuit, heterodox thinker persecuted by the Inquisition, and missionary working in the Brazilian province of Maranhão, stands comparison with Giorgio Agamben as a reader of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. In spite of dissimilar historical circumstances, both ask the crucial questions concerning universalism and may be regarded as theoreticians of the transcultural condition, understood in this essay as a state of naked, prelapsarian humanity beyond any cultural distinction. This primordial undressed condition – Unbekleidetheit that Agamben found in the theology of Erik Peterson – might become available again due to the passage into the eschatological time, the kairós of Paul. As one can imagine, Vieira might have lacked sufficient intellectual freedom to fully verbalize all the implications of his vision of the spiritual Fifth Empire unifying mankind. These silenced views that the inquisitorial archives failed to transmit to our times may be recuperated, at least as a hypothesis, through the confrontation of the two readers of Paul and the reflection on the possible transcultural horizons as well as shortcomings of Vieira’s visionary thought.
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Critical Inquiry is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to the best critical thought in the arts and humanities. Founded in 1974, it has been called “one of the best known and most influential journals in the world” (Chicago Tribune) and “academe’s most prestigious theory journal” (New York Times).
https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/ Africa is the premier journal devoted to the study of African societies and culture. Editorial policy encourages an interdisciplinary approach, involving humanities, social sciences, and environmental sciences. Africa aims to give increased attention to African production of knowledge, highlighting the work of local African thinkers and writers, emerging social and cultural trends 'on the ground', and links between local and national levels of society. At the same time, it maintains its commitment to the theoretically informed analysis of the realities of Africa's own cultural categories. Each issue contains six or seven major articles, arranged thematically, extensive review essays and substantial book reviews.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/africa The Journal of Global History aims to be the leading scholarly outlet for comparative and connective accounts of world historical significance. JGH publishes articles that examine structures, processes and theories of global change, inequality and stability, as well as articles focusing on smaller scales that are in keeping with, or transcend, the boundaries of historical polities or environments. JGH particularly values creativity and originality in approaches to global history, as well as debates on the theories, methods and evidence underpinning major historical narratives.
Intellectual history as a subject has thrived because it gives people the skills to understand an alien persona, the product of cultures and beliefs that are likely to have been altogether at odds with their own. Intellectual historians can learn to appreciate the different values held by societies whose modes of living may clash with our own, and realise that the rationales of such values are explicable. Above all, intellectual history teaches prudence, a sense of the alternative futures articulated by historical actors, the transmission mechanisms they developed to realise those futures, and the limits upon their capacity to improve and sometimes to protect their worlds. Given the lack of disciplinary or geographical boundaries to the subject of intellectual history as traditionally practised, it is right to create a journal that encourages exactly these virtues on a global scale. This journal encourages submissions that cross disciplinary boundaries, that are comparative and transnational, that are concerned with long-term ideological movements and significant turning points in the history of ideas, with the relationship between nations and cultures and continents, and from ancient to modern times.
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rgih20/current |
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International Journal for Philosophy of Religion provides a medium for the exposition, development, and criticism of important philosophical insights and theories relevant to religion in any of its varied forms. It also provides a forum for critical, constructive, and interpretative consideration of religion from an objective philosophical point of view. Articles, symposia, discussions, reviews, notes, and news in this journal are intended to serve the interests of a wide range of thoughtful readers, especially teachers and students of philosophy, philosophical theology and religious thought. Unsolicited book reviews are not accepted for publication.
https://www.springer.com/journal/11153 |
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Filosofia Theoretica provides outlet for well researched and original papers in the following areas of African studies: philosophy, culture, religions, history and arts. It also publishes book reviews.
https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ft |
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Terrae Incognitae is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal published for the Society for the History of Discoveries. The aim is to examine the history and impact of geographic exploration and cross-cultural interaction around the globe prior to the modern era. Each issue includes an expansive book review section. Recent articles have ranged from the use of DNA technology to track the movement of chickens and thus populations in pre-historic Oceania to the role of the Order of Christ in furthering 16th-century Portuguese expansion; from the significance of inter-cultural adoption or rejection of clothing for understanding cross-cultural interaction to Marco Polo’s influence on cartography. Terrae Incognitae accepts contributions relating to geographic exploration and its impact from all chronologies before the modern era and relating to any part of the globe. The journal welcomes comparative and interdisciplinary studies as well as those focused on a particular time or place. The origin of geographic discovery and exploration is lost to the mist of time—perhaps when an early hominid went searching for game and discovered another group of humans. Geographic discovery is about more than the moment of discovery, however. It is about theoretical geography put into practice; it is about bankrolling expeditions, whether through the investment of wealthy widows, old age pensions, financiers, or governments; it is about maps and mapmakers; it is about diplomats, missionaries, explorers, scallywags and pirates, naturalists, and merchant-adventurers. Geographic discovery is about people broadening their horizons, encountering one another for the first time, struggling to understand a foreign culture, and braving the unknown in search of a new destiny.
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ytin20/current |
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SCIAMVS is an annual journal dedicated to studies of the sources of pre-modern exact sciences—where the notion of modernity is understood to play out differently in different geographical regions.
https://www.sciamvs.org/issues.html |
