Colloquia Humanistica is the interdisciplinary journal of humanities of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Our aim is to introduce a variety of perspectives in discussing contemporary issues. We would like to propose a unique space that allows an intensive intellectual debate and a dynamic exchange of thoughts between researchers of different perspectives in humanities and social sciences. Colloquia Humanistica kindly invites submissions of manuscripts that address the topic:

The sense of an ending and the imagination of the end: apocalypse, disaster and messianic time

Deleuze calls the New Testament’s Apocalypse “the book of Zombies” highlighting not only its connection with death but the influence on the contemporaneity. 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 intend to gather various voices concerning the contemporary discursive practices embracing the topic of the sense of an ending and imagination of the end. We propose the three main threads of the end-directed perspective – apocalypse, disaster and messianic tradition. Yet, we are open to proposals tackling the topic from a different angle, not limited to the apocalyptic genre or literature, but embracing variety of perspectives, including art, media or popular culture. 

Several thematic fields can be proposed as examples of possible contributions:

• apocalyptic poetic or motives in contemporary philosophical thought, literary and art practices;
• the contemporary allusions to traditional (biblical, mythical) imaginary of apocalypse or the end of the world, continuities and discontinuities;
• craving for the end as a dream about a new beginning – connection between apocalyptical imaginary and search for renewal;
• various visions of an ending, apocalypse and catastrophe (environmental, humanitarian etc.), apocalypse in the modern and postmodern imagination;

Other themes related to the leading topic are encouraged as well.

We invite researchers with experience in various fields including, but not limited to humanities, philosophy, cultural and literary studies to contributing to the 11^th volume of Colloquia Humanistica. The title and short abstract should be submitted by November 1st, 2021. The deadline for manuscripts is December 31^th, 2021. Papers should be submitted on the open journal platform.

Contributors are encouraged to refer to the author guidelines at the journal website: https://ispan.waw.pl/journals/index.php/ch/about.

Feel free to contact scientific editor of the volume: