THE COMING HUMANITIES:
​IN SEARCH OF THE TRANSCULTURAL CONDITION

Humanistyka, która nadchodzi. W poszukiwaniu kondycji transkulturowej, Warszawa, DiG, 2018; 152 pp.
ISBN 978-83-286-0031-7

The four essays collected in this volume, Emergence, Desert, Circulation and Topology, constitute an attempt at designing the horizon of the transcultural humanities. It is a study of what, in the activity of the human being prone to cross boundaries, creates, on the one hand, a new level of complexity, dwarfing the richness of the singular cultures, and on the other hand, the void resulting from the collapse of contradictory and competing exigences introduced by each of them. The description of this new situation  requires theoretical invention, the invention that implies revisiting the legacy of the postmodernism. Between the City and the Desert, Europe and the Mediterranean, philosophy and mysticism, language and silence, intellectual and mystic, there exist a new, and yet so ancient kind of circulation, creating a symbolic space with a complex, multidimensional topology.

TRANSCULTURAL CONDITION AND THE SEARCH FOR NEW UNIVERSALISM

Transcultural Humanities constitute a long-term research program that is supposed to lead me through diverse levels of reflection and the study of diverse cultural facts to formulate a coherent conception of a specific condition of human breaking through the culturally defined mood of existence into new possibilities of experiencing and communicating, a transculture as a new mood of existence.
The term “transculture” has been recently adopted as a part of the current vocabulary in humanities, even if its assertions and precise meanings may vary from one author to another. “Transcultural” may simply refer to any wandering human or symbolic element migrating from one culture into another. My own definition of this term is nonetheless more radical. Speaking about transcultural condition, I refer to a stage of development in which an individual may liberate himself or herself from a culture understood, pessimistically, as a set of automatisms and filters separating him or her from the unmediated experience of the world and making him or her unable of empathy and communication with fellow human beings placed outside a culturally determined horizon. Such a liberation from culture implies a penetration into a new dimension of experience and communication.
Transcultural condition, understood in these terms, is either an individual, spiritual achievement or an aspiration nurtured against the limitations imposed by a culture. The novel element that distinguishes my approach from the predominating academic practice in transcultural studies is a deeper chronological perspective. Current studies concerning transculture usually speak about recent conditions, determined by the globalizing processes, migrations and similar phenomena treated as peculiar for the contemporary world. I admit this peculiarity of our times, treating the globalized era as a time of emergence in which new frequency and range of symbolic interactions enable the human to make his or her transcultural condition effective. Nonetheless my understanding of transcultural aspiration delves deep into the past in search of the roots and precedents of the new consciousness. Due to this perspective, the transcultural individual is no longer a mere dispatriant, eradicated from a culture and thrown into uncertain and precarious existence. He or she becomes a member of unseen, yet essential community, transforming and perfecting the humanity across time and space.  
In my program of research, the inaugural moment of transcultural aspiration and consciousness is located in al-Andalus between IX and mid-XIII century AD. In even broader perspective, the search for new universalism is closely related to the consciousness of unity of Abrahamic monotheisms, in its historical assertion on one hand, and in its more recent tradition related to the modern concepts such as philosophia perennis on the other. No need to add that my concept of transcultural studies goes beyond a mere literary criticism and recuperates the burden of utopia implied by those earlier approaches to spiritual universalism. To grant a transcultural future to the European culture is the lasting stake of this endeavor.
Several book projects should be developed in the framework of this research. Perhaps the most crucial of them is The Condition of Worldliness. Emergent topologies of the aesthetic and intellectual space. The first of the key words that appear in the title, the worldliness, is a redefinition of a concept proposed by Said, his state of "being-in-the-world" that acquires a new meaning. Topology, yet another key word in my vocabulary, refers to an abstract conceptualization of the sphere of potential discursivities. Emergence, a term that appears more often in natural sciences than humanities, refers to a new level of symbolical complexity fostered by new modalities of circulation and exchange, including a particular linguistic tool, the transcultural, universalist, globalized English that I treat as something more than just a natural language.
Thus, I'm interested in a multidirectional exploration of the transcultural domain. First of all, as mentioned above, I'm thinking about specific methodologies that might become useful in the description of this emergent reality. Key concept of topologies opens the perspective of a diagrammatic procedure of mapping the connections or relationships between cultural subjects and facts. 
Even if the transculture is often considered as a recent phenomenon, fostered by new, globalized conditions, I'm equally interested in its roots, its precedents that might be found in more or less distant past, such as some fascinating traits of al-Andalus that I mentioned above, but not only. The importance of some early, Andalusian beginnings is crucial if we consider the actuality of the monotheistic debates in the contemporary world. But what I really want to achieve exploring them is a more general perspective on the emergent space of intellectual interaction and intersection of what used to be called East and West. An important point here is not to speak about integration in some kind of global cultural conglomerate, but about the creation of fields of synergistic and "harmonic" tensions that might foster pluralism in stead of reducing it. The Portuguese might enter this panorama as the "crooked timber" of transcultural aspiration, that in Vieira degenerated into a vision of a state. Anyway, the history of culture produces abundant material to be studied from this perspective. In the meanwhile, I see it as a general framework to inscribe several books on which I've been working on in my "Varsovian period": Tesserae, on cultural history of the Mediterranean, Intrusive Spirit of the Desert, on Muslim intellectuals active in the present-day Europe. The concept of transcultural English brings me ideas for a study on Pessoa. 
On the other hand, another fascinating problem that appears here for me is the question of unprecedented creation and a vision that might be a final, Utopian result of a topology: abstract, general, and prospective view of empty fields, open to future emergence of works of art or other symbolic activities. The Poetics of the Void and finally the Desert, a volume issued from my seminars given at the "Artes Liberales", may prove to be only the early steps in this direction, in a landscape of Transcultural Humanities that I see as a lifelong challenge.

Beyond 'transculture' and 'transcultural writing': searching for conceptual tools to approach an emergent dimension

This is an account of the personal experience of attempting a theoretical innovation that might lead to a new approach in comparative literature. This experience parts from the concept of 'transculture' proposed by Michail Epstein. The vocabulary of 'transcultural literary studies' has been enriched by Arianna Dagnino et al. On the other hand, I observe that the adjective 'transcultural' becomes too broad, wishy-washy term signifying anything that 'extends through all human cultures' or used to describe diverse pragmatical approaches to communication (Richard Slimbach et al.).
I see the necessity of introducing a specific concept of transcultural dimension in which certain forms of experience and expression break through the cultured condition of man, leading into something that may be regarded as impossible: thinking and speaking beyond any particular cultural codification. Such as hypothetical stage, perhaps finding a precedent in the “mumbling” of a mystic, is nonetheless characteristic for the contemporary subject experiencing a constant “superposition” of numerous cultural codes.
Considering this situation is crucial for our reflection on literary expression. Literature is at the same time a culturally defined codification and a way of breaking through the “received” (culturally transmitted) ways of encoding individual experience. Just to give an example, Joyce's particular idiom in Finnegans Wake may be seen as a “superposition” of codes. I continue borrowing from the language of natural sciences, calling this process an emergence of a new level of complexity and using a topological metaphor of a higher dimension.
At the same time, I follow the tradition established by postmodern philosophy, namely with such terms as 'khōra' proposed by Derrida. I search for a similar term to signify the emergent transcultural dimension in an precise, idiomatic, yet inspiring way. For Derrida, the classical Greek played the role of a “stock vocabulary”. I try to break through the boundaries of Eurocentric humanities, bringing the classical Arabic into the scope of this attempt at theory building.

EREMOS:
​TRANSCULTURAL POTENTIAL OF MYSTICISM

The hope of opposing the rise of fundamentalisms – a critical concern in the present-day Europe – is to be reinforced by exploration of the modalities of spiritual life that may effectively counterbalance them: the heterodox and mystical tendencies that aim at blurring the oppressive terms of political theologies. The historical heritage of mysticisms, requiring an urgent reactivation in the post-secular conditions, bridges the gap created by essentialist thinking about East-West spiritual and intellectual division.
Intending to go in this direction, I have been working, since 2012, on a radical understanding of the term “transcultural”, considering the possibility of breaking through one of the basic limitations of the human condition: the inalienable inscription of the individual in a given culture as an overwhelming structure of meaning. I think not only about the possibility of crossing the frontier dividing one culture from another; what I have in mind is the possibility of breaking through the entire culturally determined structure of the human experience. This apparent impossibility may be seen as the universal core of mystical aspirations. Its consequences may be found in heterodox stances formulated in any of the monotheistic religions of the Mediterranean world, as well as in the intellectual and spiritual heritage of some European thinkers: Rudolf Otto, Titus Burckhardt or those clustering around the denomination of philosophia perennis.
The project of getting “out of culture” may seem utopian at best. Yet the glimpses of such liminal spiritual adventures that constantly reappear in the varied landscape of heterodox monotheisms make me believe that such an idea haunted exceptional individuals across centuries. My long-term project is to build up a consistent theoretical approach around this understanding of mysticism as a path leading towards a transcultural condition. In order to differentiate it clearly from other meanings of the term “transcultural”, quite polyvalent in the present-day humanities (f.ex. in Pratt, Welsch, Epstein, Dagnino, and others), I decided to introduce the idiomatic concept of Eremos, evoking the notion of the desert (crucial in the monotheistic traditions and intensely present in post-modern humanities) in order to render the hypothetical dimension situated “beyond any culture”.
In a larger perspective of my research work, I would like to trace the diverse ramifications of this transcultural heritage at the crossroad of heterodox Christianity and Islam. Focusing on the early-20th century school of comparative religious studies, I analyse the "reinvention" of the Sufi tradition in the West.
The result of this research should be published as a book – a first part of a larger series of studies in which I will introduce and explore the concept of Eremos as emergent space of encounter situated in the transcultural dimension, building on the metaphor of a “hyper-cultured” and at the same time “de-cultured” desert inhabited by anchoretic intellectuals who withdraw from their cultural contexts to occupy an apparently impossible location: outside and above any particular culture. 

Breaking through Eurocentric humanities while Europe remains a privileged location: Andalusian transcultural connectivities

In my research, I've been exploring the ways of conceptualizing the transcultural condition, understood as the experience of crossing an absolute cultural boundary. The contemporary “neo-nomadic” subject moves not only from one culture to another, but also into the void beyond any culture, breaks through the cultured condition of man. As a research hypothesis, I admit that such a state is not a novelty; on the contrary, we might be able to establish a “transcultural tradition”, recognizing traces of similar experiences across the world written heritage. These past experiences almost certainly involved a battle against the limits of language and of the literary systems as vehicles of culturally transmitted codifications of experience; most probably, they were isolated from one another, rarely forming consistent strands of tradition; yet the present conceptualization permits to identify and bind them together. Perhaps the “mumbling” of an Iberian mystic thrown into the void of culture by his or her attempts at approaching the divine may be one of the fields of such exploration in search of historical parallels to the contemporary condition. Exploring heterodox religious traditions of the monotheistic triad present in the European and Mediterranean past may be projected as the first step of this research.
As its basic principle, such a reflection involves a universalizing potential. Apparently, in the attempt at penetrating into the transcultural dimension the exact location of the researching subject is irrelevant. Yet I believe that Europe, once again, has something special to offer in this domain; I'm thinking about this “other Europe” that has been suggested in the call. Namely, the heritage of the medieval al-Andalus appears to me as worth considering in the search for those precedents of the transcultural condition. Concomitantly, this region, geographically situated in Europe and forming part of the European heritage, is an important element of non-European identities in such remote and culturally divergent parts of the world as Malaysia or Saudi Arabia. Building on Andalusian heritage offers quite a distinct coloration to this new proposal of universalism.
At the same time, the question of creating new conceptual tools and idiomatic vocabulary for this transcultural theory is open. It contributes to the discussion on the status of English as a language of world humanities. It should be transformed into a kind of linguistic parergon gathering transversal terms and concepts, rich in resonances in more than one cultural, literary and philosophical tradition. The postmodern concept formation, exemplified in the creation of the term 'khōra' by Derrida, offers a paradigm to be reemployed in this context. While the classical Greek offered a “stock vocabulary” to him, the option of exploring the Andalusian Arabic may appear as an interesting alternative at the present moment.

Defining the symbolic space. From a cluster of trancultural case studies to a topological conceptualization

The topological project is derived and subsidiary in relation to my program of Transcultural Humanities. The first premise of the necessity of topological approach is derived from the concept of emergence. Transcultural reality constitutes a new level of complexity in the symbolic organization in comparison to cultures and the cultured condition of man. This new complexity requires new tools. The idea of seeking inspiration in certain branches of contemporary mathematics is a response to this necessity of building new paradigms for transcultural theory and criticism.
This search for new tools, complementary in relation to the textual mood of reflection, has been initiated already by the classical post-modernism. The heritage of Guattari, Deleuze and Derrida, established by their attempts at introducing visual operations into philosophy, is to be resumed as a line of research and reflection.
This new visual mood is iconoclastic and anti-mimetic. It breaks through the dominant tradition of the European art, based on mimetic representation, in order to reestablish minor zones of visual experience. At the same time, giving a new meaning to the visualness typical for the mathematical paradigms of rendering concepts and relationships, it fosters the unification of art, science and humanities.