Philobiblon

VOLUME IV, V, VI, VII
1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002

Contents

Abstracts

PAUL RICOEUR:
THE "GRAFT", THE "RESIDUE" AND "MEMORY".
Two  Conversations with TAMAS TÓTH

 The text contains two interviews made by Tamas Toth, researcher of the MTA (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) Budapest, with Paul Ricoeur in June 1991 and June 1996. The main stages of the French philosopher's life and work as well as his views on hermeneutics, tradition and postmodernism are also outlined in these conversations. The "residue", the "graft" and "memory" are issues connected to a lifetime's work and lively thought which sees itself as constitutional. In every book and writing there "remain" unanswered questions which motivate further writings. Moreover, the issues of language, history, present  and - this is most important - memory come to surface. This latter is the one which Ricoeur says about the most new things, in an inherent but proble-matising context.

CHANGES IN THE ROBINSON PARADIGM OR THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE SUBJECT OF MODERNITY

Andras MESZaROS

 Robinson is one of the archetypes of the modern subject. He also has an eschatologic fate. However, it is not only the permanent redefinition of his subjectivity against his object-appendage that makes him a prototype, but also the form of his time. This raises the eschatological question whether there is mercy for such an individual. Robinson creates his own time in his loneliness and in his relation with nature. The study analyses three literary works dealing with this process, such as the works of D. Defoe, M. Tournier and B. Malamud. The initial optimistic rationalism (Defoe) turns into a merciless irony (Malamud). The new order of life outside the existing order becomes impossible.
 

THE SENSE OF METAPHYSICS IN CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT

Vasile FRATEANU

 The study proves the omnipresence of metaphysics in contemporary thought. The fundamental meanings of the term are presented: a) the onto-theological meaning b) the ontological meaning as such (with reference to the subjective being, subjectivity and the "supra-subjective" being, objective being) c) the paradoxical ontological meaning which implies the equalization and, finally, substitution of being with becoming as well as the substitution of being with the nothing (on the level of intention, at least). However, metaphysical thought can be found today not only in the field of "pure" philosophy but also in other fields such as science and politics. We can conclude therefore that the present epoch cannot "get rid" of metaphysics and also, this would not be desirable.

THE ROMANIAN NATION IN TRANSYLVANIA:
ITS HISTORY AND SOCIAL MEMORY

Tanya DUNLAP

The organic conception of nationhood that came into question in the middle of the twentieth century has been further discredited by recent scholarly works on nation building and nationalism. These works reject the essentialist or primordial notion of nationhood and describe how empowered groups pursuing their own interests constructed modern nations. The primary intention of these "constructionist" approaches is to contrast the conceptualization of nationhood with a population's sense of pre-modern identity and to demonstrate how and why elites instituted the concept of the nation throughout the world. They explain especially well the initial emergence of nationalist movements, but they largely ignore the agency of non-elites who are all too often regarded as disinterested, passive subjects. By focusing on elites, scholars have been able to describe cultures and traditions as "retrospective inventions" without explaining how or why the masses came to accept "artificial creations" as part of their natural heritage. Their arguments do not account for either the initial attractiveness or the persistence of the national paradigm for non-capitalist, non-elite communities, like rural nineteenth-century Transylvania. A better understanding of how the national paradigm in rural societies achieved widespread acceptance is gained from an investigation of the connections between living social memories and deliberate efforts to make the idea of the nation meaningful for the entire national community.

OSZKAR JASZI AND THE CAUSE OF NATIONALITIES

Mircea POPA

The study deals with the specific role that the Hungarian democratic thinker Oszkar Jaszi's work had in the social, national and nationality policy of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy in the first decade of the 20th century. After his sociological and political studies Jaszi also wrote about the nationality question which had to be reformed. His book, The Formation of Nation-States and the Nationality Question raised the sympathy of Romanians and other nationalities because Jaszi placed the nationality question in the context of human rights.

INTELLECTUAL-ARTISTS IN ROMANIA AND THE GERMAN CULTURAL MEDIUM: THE EXAMPLE OF MÜNCHEN
(1808-1935)

Stelian MANDRUT

The study deals with the frequency of students from the actual territory of Romania at higher education artistic institutions in the capital of Bavaria between 1808-1935. The author offers some essential reference points in studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, based on four school registers: global number of students, distribution according to historical and geographic zones, social status of students, scholarships, religion and nationality, subjects and specialisations, artistic "migration". The final conclusion refers to the role of model of the München institution considered as a professional "laboratory" of formation that spread a critical and innovative spirit among the intellectual elite of 19th and 20th century Romania.

ASPECTS OF THE MEDIAN SPACE OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IN JUDAISM AND EASTERN CHRISTIANITY

Sandu FRUNZA

 Religious experience presents us with a polarity which suggests a permanent working together of specifically human symbolisation and the transcendent conditioning of every experience in the median space of religious experience. The transcendent acts as a universal operator which we try to represent by the means offered by apophatic thought. Negative theology offers us the image of an Unknowable God. This universal operator acquires the revelational contents of a certain religion, thus creating the possibility of a specific religious experience. This paper traces the ways in which the Unknowable God manifests itself in the symbolic structures offered by Judaic and Christian thought.

THE QUARRELL OF WORDS

Monica GHET

The text looks into the forms of Romanian anti-totalitarian culture, especially in the first two decades of the Second World War, the way in which men of letters expressed their rejection of controlled culture. The interpretation of anti-totalitarian culture is in a hermeneutic manner and is supported by the interpretation of terminology, dictionary entries connected to "ANTI" (resistance, dissidence, opponence). The conclusion is that apart from the isolated anti-communist resistance in the mountains there was no other form of coherent-collective resistance organised on the level of the majority of the population in Romania, not to mention dissidence. Only individual gestures and small groups kept alive faith in alternative solutions.

SAPIENTIAL DIALOGUE. HEBREW AND ROMANIAN PROVERBS IN THE COLLECTIVE MEMORY

Maria RADOSAV

 Proverbs as a folklore genre are part of the sapiential literature of a people and are acquisitions in time of a certain ethical code and life experience; they are at the same time a self-educational exercise. This paper offers some reference points in the comparative sudy of Hebrew and Romanian proverbs. The first part is a general survey of the Romanian preoccupations in the field of comparatism in sapiential literature. The second part insists on the dynamics of Jewish culture in Europe in order to emphasize the context in which Jewish sapiential literature could have got in contact with Romanian spirituality. The third part offers a study- case regarding similarities and differences from a stylistic or grammatical point of view between Hebrew and Romanian proverbs.

THE REPRESENTATIVES OF REPRESSION IN COMMUNIST ROMANIA: THE SHREWD INVESTIGATOR, THE SADISTIC TORTURER AND THE BALCANISED CLOWN

Ruxandra CESEREANU

 The study draws a typology of the representatives of repression in Romanian communist jails and camps. This is not an external typology but it is based on the memories of convicts. Starting from this classification and drawing on the experiences of international memoir literature and historiography, the study offers an "anthropologic" understanding of the Romanian communist jails and camps until the end of the 1980s.

TWELVE FRAMES FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE 1980s

GEza SZOCS

 Ellenpontok was the only Romanian samizdat periodical. The author was one of the initiators and collaborators. This paper recalls the stages of creating this newspaper and then its cessation in the 1980s. The basic idea of this Hungarian publication was that in the circumstances of the party system it was impossible to ensure the rights of a greater minority in the long run. Besides the conception of the periodical the paper presents the story of the articles, the publication of issues, the persecution of collaborators and the fading memories in the history of this periodical.
 

LE SYMPTÔME COMMEMORATIF: L’EXEMPLE DU BICENTENAIRE DE LA REVOLUTION FRANÇAISE (1989)

Patrick GARCIA

 Commemoration is nothing else than addressing the man of the present in the name of the past in order to stress their common evolution (devenir). In fact, history and the past is transformed again and again on such occasions, depending on the outlining of the present and the “roots” of the future. On the other hand, every revolution is a foundation which separates. Cohesion is only possible if the "heritage" is selected in the process of commemoration. The paper compares the 100th, 150th and 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, emphasizing the role of various traditions (republican, leftist and extreme right). Regarding the 1989 anniversary, irony has a special role in its understanding.

DU TRAITEMENT DE L’OBJET "COMMEMORATION" ET DE QUELQUES-UNS DE SES EFFETS OU DE LA TRANSMISSION À L’AGE DEMOCRATIQUE,
POST-SCRIPTUM AU TEXTE DE PATRICK GARCIA

Philippe DUJARDIN

The commemoration of the French Revolution called the attention of researchers to the importance of studying commemorative gestures. Thus commemoration became an "object" of research. This raises many theoretical and methodological problems. Commemoration sets up a special temporality: the living evoke the past and make reference to it, more or less outlining the future, too. This carries some disciplinary problems: historians deal with a past time, sociologists and political scientists with a present time while anthropologists deal with an eternal, ritual time which is outside historical time. These various times must be brought together somehow. However, it is difficult to reconcile strategic and symbolic thinking and there is also the "duty" of commemoration versus systematic doubt and the irony linked to it. The paper suggests that we interpret commemoration gestures in the memory-creating practice of the age of democracy. Commemoration becomes part of museology and patrimonialisation.
 

“L’ENTREES ROYALES” IN TRANSYLVANIA AND THE BANAT (18th-19th CENTURY).
DISCOURSE AND REPRESENTATION

Doru RADOSAV

 Royal visits focalized Romanian realities in the 18th-19th centuries. Therefore their significance goes beyond the reconstructive and systematic historiographic interest. Such events have been studied from an anthropological, historical and cultural perspective (the spectacle, the game and feasts in general.)
 Royal symbols are resemantised in these royal visits. They become a symbolic replacement of the king, a standard worth imitating, acquiring a political overdetermination, symbolising imperial victory together with the assertion of dynasticism and authoritarianism, converging towards the myth of the "good king".

HAD-BEEN-NESS AND PAST
Istvan KIRALY

 In many respects and quite often the past seems to dominate the present in Central and Eastern Europe, mainly in Romania. Commencing from this existential situation, the study reconsiders the issue of the past. The surpassing of the treatment of the issue of mentality and putting in brackets of the very abstract philosophical category of time was necessary for this. We must analyse our "experiences" from an ontological-phenomenological and hermeneutic perspective. This reveals that the past is not something that has already happened and come to an end but it is the sphere of special possibilities ontologically formed of a no-longer-being which creates several existential and historical tasks.

PLOWING IN ROCKY LAND: ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE, MANAGED CHANGE, AND QUALITY IMPROVEMENT IN SELECTED ROMANIAN POST-COMMUNIST LIBRARIES

Irene OWENS; Hermina G.B. ANGHELESCU

Romanian libraries have had a rich heritage of collecting and preserving materials in the domains of national and foreign history, literature, art, and science. During the communist regime they served as propaganda tools for the government's Marxist ideology. In post-communist Romania, there is a desire among some librarians to promote change from a system of limited access to information to a more open system that focuses on quality improvement of library services, operations, and organization. In their efforts to overcome the communist legacy to libraries in their country, some Romanian librarians-with local resources and support from international agencies-are implementing western managerial styles and services. This case study reflects the results, assessments, and recom-mendations from a survey conducted at a workshop of selected Romanian librarians in August of 1998. Considerations for the implementation of needed changes are also included.

ANALYTIC BIBLIOGRAPHY, CONTENT AND GENRE ANALYSIS OF THE BIBLIOLOGIC LITERATURE IN ROMANIAN LIBRARIANSHIP PERIODICALS

Florina ILIS; Istvan KIRALY; Angela MARCU

 The study analyses articles from Romanian librarianship periodicals with content-analyis methods known from statistics-bibliometry and sociology. This is not only a thematic and statistic analysis; writings are considered from the point of view of their theoretical level. We have defined six categories: chronicle, commentary, documentary synthesis, polemical essay, study and essay. Besides pointing out the dominant topics in this literature, the statistic analysis also shows their variation. It becomes clear that Romanian librarianship literature has very few polemics, studies, essays and documentary syntheses.

MENTALITY IN THE PRACTICE OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN  STATE PUBLIC LIBRARIES:
 A  STATEMENT OF FACTS

Marius DODU

 The study analyses the processes and disfunctions in the activity of state funded or community institutions after the removal of ideology. Public libraries, mainly county libraries are in the centre of interest. The insufficiency of financial resources and inertia in the change of mentality characterises their management in general and human resource management in particular. Human resource departments are still under the badge of "maintaining" instead of "development". The lack of interest in existing human resources and the inadequate method of recruitment have also added to this. The leadership style changed from a dictatorial to a paternalising one and now these mentalities must be surpassed.

USERS OF BIOLOGY LIBRARIES

Zoe BUZ ; Gabriela MORARESCU; Monica ROMAN

The use of library statistics in the analysis of library users in a branch library such as the Zoology in the Biology-Geography-Geology Section of the "Lucian Blaga" Central University Library is one of the usual methods which is combined in this case with public opinion survey about reading conditions. The study presents the results of such an investigation and its relevance in the improvement of library activities.

ROMANIAN LIBRARIES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION?

 Liliana MICLAUS

The text is an attempt to analyse the University Library Karlsruhe, Germany in parallel with the Central University Library Cluj, occasioned by a scholarship in Karlsruhe. This is not a comparative but a constructive "parallel". It led to certain projects of cooperation between libraries in Cluj, regional cooperation and participation in the Leonardo project of the EU and the raising of standards in Romanian university libraries.

LIBRARIANSHIP EDUCATION AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT: THE BRITISH EXPERIENCE

Ilona GURKA-BALLA;  Florina ILIS

The role and function of libraries has changed considerably in our renewing information world: we must supply users with ordered information. We must view the theoretical background and the practice of the triple reader-document-librarian formula in a new light. During a two-week visit to university and public libraries in England at the beginning of 2000 we could see what computer use and connection to the world wide web means. The name of librarianship has also changed at the University of Northumbria: 'Information Studies' refers to librarians' change of mentality. Reforms in the education of future librarians are an integral part of national research projects.The dominance of the lifelong learning attitude makes librarians open towards the youngest and the oldest readers. This is the role of library and librarian, the computer data-base-built virtual library and the information manager. Librarian edu-cation must be based on this change of mentality; the creation of common national databases is a priority and must influence research in library and information studies.