Ala-Too International University
International University of Kyrgyzstan
Burana Research InstituteSociety for Philosophy as Global Conversation

International Colloquium in Contemporary Philosophy
and Culture
Home and Journey around the GlobeMay 30-June 1, 2019
Colloquium Chair:
Jon Mahoney, 2018-19 Fulbright Scholar, Kyrgyz Republic; Professor of Philosophy, Kansas State University

Dates and Venues:
May 30, 2019
Ala-Too International University
Ankara Street 1/8, Tunguch, 720048, Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic: http://www.iaau.edu.kg/
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/International+Alatoo+University,+Bishkek//@42.8558378,74.6111007,12z/
data=!4m8!4m7!1m5!1m1!1s0x389eb6c95311ea6b:0x7023946675e4c5a9!2m2!1d74.6811409!2d42.8558591!
1m0

May 31 -- June 1, 2019
International University of Kyrgyzstan
17A/1, Tolstoy Street, 720007, Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic: http://muk.iuk.kg/?en
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Central+Campus+MUK,+Bishkek//@42.866416,74.5001475,12z/data=!4m8!4m7!1m5!1m1!1s0x389ec8387095cd41:0xc2e704d5dd1be401!2m2!1d74.5701877!2d42.8664373!1m0

2

COLLOQUIUM PROGRAM

May 30, 2019
Ala-Too International University

Registration
9:30 am – 10:00 am

Thursday Panel I: 10:00 am – 11:45 am
Philosophy as Journey and Homecoming
Opening Remarks
Philosophy as Journey
Tomokazu Baba, University of Nagano
Thinking as Waying and Homecoming: Heidegger and Lao-tse
Rossen Roussev, "St. Cyril and St. Methodius" University of Veliko Tarnovo
North South University
Lafcadio Hearn and Japan: From a “Journey” to “Home”
Fabien Durringer, University of Orléans

Thursday Panel II: 1:15 pm – 2:45 pm
Utopian Drive, Situating the Social, and Democracy
Chair: Jon Mahoney, Kansas State University
The Utopian Drive or How to Journey Forward
Alicja Kowalska, University of Presov and DAAD
Situating the Social: Challenging the Mold in Central Asia and Beyond
Christian Kelly Scott, Penn State University
Public Perception of Democracy and the Level of Civic Engagement in Kyrgyzstan
Rouslan Jalil, International Ala-Too University3

Thursday Panel III: 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Journey as Backpacking, Nomadic of Life, and Creativity
Chair: Rossen Roussev, "St. Cyril and St. Methodius" University of Veliko Tarnovo
North South University

The Backpacker(art project)
Kristoffer Zeiner
Nomadic Art Camp: Art Project Presentation
Shaarbek Amankul, B'Art Contemporary

Tabula Firmamentum: Road as an Inspiration in my Creative Process
Wojciech Domagalski, Polish and Japanese Academy of Information Technology
Wacław Szpakowski’s “Rhythmical Lines” as a Notation of Life Journey
Maciej Zdanowicz, The Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce

4

May 31, 2019
International University of Kyrgyzstan
Friday Panel I: 9:00 am – 10:30
Free Movement, Culture, and Cosmopolitanism
Chair: Ivelina Stoeva, "St. Cyril and St. Methodius" University of Veliko Tarnovo

Exceptions to the Free Movement of Workers in the European Union
Cristina Ilie Goga, University of Craiova
Cultures, Universalism and Understanding: A Contemporary Reassessment of Relativism
Miguel Angel Quintana Paz, European University "Miguel de Cervantes"
The Hyperlocal and the Cosmopolitan
Nicholas Birns, New York University
Friday Panel II: 10:45 am – 12:15 pm
Trans-cultural Inluences, Spirituality, and Self-development
Chair: Francesc Passani (University of Barcelona)
Beyond Orientalist Holism? The influence of East and Central Asian Thought on British Literature in the
Twentieth Century
Fiona Tomkinson, Nagoya University
Spirituality beyond religion: Early Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore
Priyambada Sarkar, University of Calcutta
Philosophical Aspects of Self-development and Self-destruction
Albina Gimkaeva, Bashkir State University
Friday Panel III: 1:45 pm – 3:15 pm
Knowledge, Ambiguity, and the Art of Translations
Chair: Tomokazu Baba, University of Nagano
Dilthey on Differentiation between Natur- and Geisteswissenschaften: A Perspective on the Quest for Knowledge
Andreas Chetkowski, DAAD & “St. Cyril and St. Methodius” University of Veliko Tarnovo

Frostian Ambiguity in Russian Translations
Valeriy Hardin, American University of Central Asia
The Art of Translation as an Institutional Policy during the Abbasid Caliphate
Francesc Passani (University of Barcelona)5

Friday Panel IV: 3:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Being Born, Societal Outcasts, and Commedia dell‘Arte(perfomance art projects)
Chair: Rossen Roussev, "St. Cyril and St. Methodius" University of Veliko Tarnovo
North South University

ARIES|fish
Presented by PLUSKVAMPERFEKTUM
Performer: Sonja Indianna Salkowitsch
Music: Ipso Schaltwerk
With the special support of the Arts Council
NorwaySocietal Outcasts, Poverty, Inequality!
Bronwyn Sims, Yale School of Drama

Commedia dell‘Arte, Improvisation, and Blockchain Technology
Rob Stupay
8:00 pm
Colloquium Dinner (optional)
Location TBD

6

June 1, 2019
International University of Kyrgyzstan
Saturday Panel I: 10:00 am – noon
Race, Gender, and Ridding the World of Hate
Chair: Jon Mahoney, Kansas State University
Can Negromaniac be an Alternative to Eurogenism?
Isaiah A. Negedu, University of Kwazulu-Natal
Gender Roles’ Inequalities in Modern Kazakhstani Society
Olga Nessipbayeva, Kazakh-British Technical University
Ridding the World of Hate with the Help of Levinas
Ivelina Stoeva, "St. Cyril and St. Methodius" University of Veliko Tarnovo
Islamic Education in Kyrgyzstan and challenges to Women's Rights
Gulmiza Seitalieva, International University of Kyrgyzstan
Saturday Panel II: 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Blends of Histories and Colors
Chair: Tomokazu Baba, University of Nagano

Historians Are Not Angels (Film, 80 min)Antoine de Mena, Filmmaker

Alive Painting(performance art project)
Akiko Nakayama, Artist
Closing Remarks

7Saturday Panel III: 7:30 pm till lateClosing Party
Chair: You, International Colloquium in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture
Venue: Chicken Star Art-Cafe
Erkindik 36 / Toktogula, Bishkek
36 Проспект Эркиндик, Бишкек
www.chicken-star.com
Blaue Blume 2.0 (Music Performance, 30 min)Andreas Chetkowski

PRESENTERS' ABSTRACTS AND INFORMATION(listed alphabetically by presenter’s last name)Nomadic Art Camp, or a Time and Land Where Horses Run Free
by
Shaarbek Amankul
Б’Art Contemporary, Kyrgyzstan
More than twenty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the Central Asian states gained
independence.” In the meantime, local culture and societies “have been losing their identity, reverence totraditions and respect toward nature.” Since 2011, artists, curators, and researchers from different countries havebeen invited to join the Nomadic Art Camp and to share into the traditional way of life of nomads as a source ofinspiration on the shores of mountain lakes and in Issyk-Kul, Sary-Chelek, and Son-Kul in the Tien Shan foothillson the Great/New Silk Road (https://vimeo.com/144071053), where they explore various issues of heritage,identity, ecology, philosophy, and modernity, as well as their impact on local and global culture. They stayed innomadic Kyrgyz yurts and traveled to well-known local natural attractions to explore this multi-ethnic country
with its spectacular nature, biological diversity, rich history and spirituality. The country's culture, blending
traditional nomadic culture and shamanism in a post-soviet setting, is closely bound with its fauna and flora as
well. Ecological consciousness is thus an intrinsic part of it and has played its role in prompting nature as a sourceof pure foods, recreation, detoxification, health, as much as mental awakening, which has its unique expressions
in traditional Kyrgyz medicine, music, and folklore. The Nomadic Art Camp project represents a newcontemporary stage in the art of Central Asia: one that emphasizes our rootedness in nature and introduces in its
conceptual approaches deep connections to traditional, local practices. The project thus aims at conditioning new
critical, philosophical, and poetic frameworks that harbor the sense of our dependence on nature. It reminds usthat by destroying nature we destroy our habitat and thus ourselves; that our sense of omnipotence is a myth, ashuman well-being depends on the well-being of nature.
Shaarbek Amankul is director of Б’Art Contemporary - an artistic research initiative which considers art as an
essential facilitator of critical dialogue on environmental, social, economic and cultural issues faced by thesocieties of Central Asia. He has participated in a number of educational programs, international art residencies,
festivals, symposia, and conferences abroad. He has had exhibitions in various post-Soviet countries, USA,
Europe, and Asia. As a part of his mobile artistic research, in 2011 he started the Nomadic Art Camp in
Kyrgyzstan, using traditional practices and way of life of nomads as a source of inspiration for contemporary
conceptual art practices. Email: bishkekcontemporaryart@gmail.com, http://bishkekart.kg/
8

Philosophy as Journey
byTomokazu Baba
University of Nagano, JapanIf philosophy is global conversation, it must be already a kind of journey around the globe. In this paper, I defend
the idea that philosophy is a journey. Here, journey is understood not in the sense of travel promoted by the
tourism industry, but as an experience that the journey can offer to ‘the traveler’.
Both Plato and Aristotle believed that philosophy begins with wonder at the world. In this sense ofwonder, we leave the sphere of everyday life in a kind of detachment from the history, other people, society, andeven from ourselves. We thus immerse ourselves in a world (universe, society, self, etc.) with which we are notfamiliar, and we are, in this sense, not at home in this world.
This experience of transition from the familiar to the unfamiliar is similar to the experience of a journey.
In the most common sense of the term, a journey begins with a departure from home. It thus presupposes home,
not only in its literal sense, but also in an existential sense. In the existential sense, the experience of a journey isat the core of philosophy.
But philosophy is a strange journey in that it does not always take us back to a “home” as it was before
the journey. As a result of the transformative affect of the journey, our home looks and feels different. If weborrow the expression of V. Jankelevitch in his doctoral thesis on the later Schelling, philosophy is an “Odyssey”
of our consciousness. And yet, this voyage discharge us of the burden of our “Being-in-the-world” (Heidegger)
and go well beyond it. Philosophy is thus an existential journey of our being.
Dr. Tomokazu Baba is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Nagano, Japan. He received a Ph.D.
from Hitotsubashi University (2008) and another one from the Sorbonne Paris IV (2013). His research discipline
includes contemporary philosophy, ethics, history of ideas, especially 20th century French and German
Philosophy, Levinas and Heidegger.

The Hyperlocal and the Cosmopolitan
byNicholas Birns
New York University, USA
In the past thirty years, cosmopolitanism has been relaunched as a philosophical concept designed to escape
reductive identities in terms of race, gender, and ethnicity. The privileging of cosmopolitanism has tended tojettison even those aspects of the organic that earlier generations found at least somewhat liberating: authenticity,solidity, evolution. This has led cosmopolitanism to have a rarefied and elite air celebrating the perceived winnersof the globalization and indifferent to those trapped in the stratum Giorgio Agamben terms “bare life.” For the
past few years I have been exploring the idea of the ‘hyperlocal’ as an elastic yet particular mode of identity that
can attain the breadth of the cosmopolitanism while having the tangibility that some once prized in the organic. I
will differentiate the hyperlocal from the Leibnizian monad and the empirical sense-datum, showing how the roleof the particle in Newtonian physics exemplified it during the gateway to the modern in the eighteenth century.
Finally, I will discuss the role Central Asia played in the eighteenth century with respect to the hyperfocal andhow that inflects what we identify as globalization in this era.
Nicholas Birns is Associate Professor at the Center for Applied Liberal Arts, New York University, and authorof Theory After Theory (2010), I Barbarian memory (2013), and Contemporary Australian Literature: A World
Not Yet Dead (2015). He has contributed articles to MLQ, Partial Answers, Exemplary, and many other journals.
9His book The Hyperlocal In Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Literary Space will be forthcoming from
Lexington Books in late 2019.

Dilthey on the Differentiation between Natur- and Geisteswissenschaften: A Perspective on the Quest forKnowledge
byAndreas Chetkowski
DAAD & “St. Cyril and St. Methodius” University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria
Wilhelm Dilthey is still considered the philosopher who made the most decisive attempt to establish theGeisteswissenschaften as an independent group of sciences alongside the Naturwissenschaften. In my paper, I will
examine Dilthey's understanding and view of the relationship and difference between Natur- andGeisteswissenschaften. The distinction is initially discussed in his Introduction to the Humanities, (in German
Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften) (1 Bd. 1883), which appeared and became influential in the German-speaking
world in the late 19th century. The term Geisteswissenschaften used there is most likely a translation of, or at least aderivation from, John Stuart Mill's term "moral sciences." In the process of gaining popularity, Dilthey's term wascompeting with an alternative designation of the same concept, namely, Kulturwissenschaften, which was advancedby the Baden's Neo-Kantians. I specifically focus on the link of Dilthey's view of the Geisteswissensschaften with his
notion of hermeneutic objectivity and emphasize that he did not advance a strict separation of the two groups ofsciences, but rather sought to establish their correlativity and complementarity, as well as to identify and anchor theircommon origin in the human nature and its quest for knowledge.

Blaue Blume 2.0(Music Performance, 30 min)byAndreas Chetkowski
DAAD & “St. Cyril and St. Methodius” University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria
The blue flower (blaue Blume) symbolizes the search for knowledge and love in nature, and likewise – the self,
as the focal point which the Romanticism of the 18th and19th centuries re-introduced into the cultural history.
The bond of nature, human, and spirit was the "Leitmotiv" of this artistic and intellectual movement, of thephilosophy of life and individualism, which epitomized the unity of feeling, thinking, creativity, and cognition.
This ideal, though, appears to have lost its timeliness at the beginning of the 21st century. This project dwells on
the phenomena of longing, sensuality, self-knowledge, self-search, sensation, communication, and love in the ageof digitalization.
Performer Anjay will be half human, half machine, and will take the audience on a journey around world
with samples from the mpc and deep beats of electron.
Andreas Chetkowski is DAAD lecturer and a doctoral student in contemporary philosophy at “St. Cyril and St.
Methodius” University of Veliko Tarnovo. He studied German Philology and Economics at the TU Berlin. Aftercompleting his studies, he taught German Studies and Linguistics at the UMCS Lublin in Poland from 2014 to 2015.

10

Tabula Firmamentum: Road as an Inspiration in the Creative Process
by
Wojciech Domagalski
Polish and Japanese Academy of Information Technology, Poland

The subject of my presentation id the issue of journey, of traveling as a method of art creation. In particular, I
relate the notions of road and traveling to my own art and creative process. My paper has the character of a freespeech and artistic reflection on these notions, including on the notion of being on the road in relation to thepractice of art. I start with the latest works from a series titled Tabula Firmanentum, which focus on travel,
traveling, and real journey to places important to me, sometimes accidental, sometimes imaginary. I visualize andperpetuate this journey with pictures depicting the sky, seen from the perspective of specific places such as thehouses of my parents and friends, visited successively over the course of the project as points on the map. This
minimalistic work only with small points on the flat surface exude immersive emptiness. My journey is notmarked by lines, but by juxtaposition of images of the sky from different vantage points of my life. If somebody
would like to come along, this person will have to look at the sky with my eyes.
Wojciech Domagalski, D.A., is a member of the Faculty of New Media Arts at the Polish and Japanese Academyof Information Technology.

Lafcadio Hearn and Japan: from a “Journey” to “Home”
by
Fabien Durringer
University of Orléans, France
Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was among the first of a few Westerners to discover Japan some time after the Meiji
Restoration when the country decided to open to the world after about 250 years of isolation from other countries(Edo period). Hearn belongs to a period of eagerness to know more about Japan that had flourished in the UnitedStates in the second half of the 19th century1. Born from a Greek mother and an Irish father in the Greek island of
Leucade in 1850, after a difficult childhood in Ireland in which he was raised by a strict grand aunt and years ofschooling marked by the loss of one of his eyes, Hearn will migrate to the United States at the age of 19. His 20
years of life in the United States, cut short by two years and a half spent in the French Indies from 1887 to 1889,
is characterized by a “life of restless wandering together with the achievement of a certain fame in the journalistic
world”2. His Japanese journey, from which he’ll never return, started in 1890 when he was sent by Harper’s
Magazine on an assignment. Until the end of his life (1904), and throughout his writings, Hearn will act as a gobetween between the West and Japan. His writings about Japan comprise many types of texts: short-stories,
anthropological studies, descriptions of scenes of life in Japan, etc. His talent made him one of the authors best
able to describe Japan with sharp insight, so much that the Japanese themselves consider him now as one of theirown authors.
Regarding the topic of the symposium Home and journey around the world, the case of Lafcadio Hearn
raises several issues. One interesting point is the fact that what started as a journey - a mission to Japan - turned
into permanent residency for him, after marrying a Japanese woman in 1891 and obtaining Japanese citizenshipin 1895. In other words, Japan became “home” for him. This first point raises the issue of a subjective, quite
personal experience (Hearn’s life) entering a different cultural reality (Japanese). Subsequently, a “journey” inwhat seems to be a completely different culture has somehow resonated within an individual, such that in him,with all his subjective past experience, aroused the desire to be a Japanese and live in Japan. Based on the case

1 HORI, Madoka, Noguchi Yônejirô no Lafcadio Hearn hyôka -Lafcadio Hearn in Japan (1910) to “Koizumi Yakumo” (1926)-, Kaishi, 25.03.2008 No 27, Nihon Joshi
Daigaku Daigakuin no Kai, p7
2
HEARN, Lafcadio, Lettres Japonaises, Paris : Pocket La Revue des Deux Mondes, 2014, p11

11

of Lafcadio Hearn, we will try to analyze this first theme through the questioning of what makes cultural identity,
linking it to the notions of “home” and “journey”.
The second topic that we would like to inquire into is the notion of go-between. Hearn, as an intermediary,
via his writings, has made it possible for many of his contemporaries to “travel,” to take a “journey” in the Far
East. By traveling through his works, people would also question their own culture, in a way “home,” and enrichtheir knowledge about themselves. One question that can be tackled regarding this second topic is to reassess the“journey” of Hearn in the light of the 21 st century. Within a highly connected world of globalization, in which
Japan seems to be at reach for everyone, have Hearn’s writings, or part of them, lost their insight? What is left of
Hearn today that can empower someone to embark on a “journey” to the heart of the Japanese cultural identity?
Mr. Fabien Durringer holds a Ph.D. in economics from Hitotsubashi University (2009) and theFrench "agrégation" qualification in "Japanese Language and Culture" (2014). He was appointed
as an associate professor (PRAG status) in Japanese studies at the University of Orléans in 2015. His
research disciplines on Japan include literature, history of literature, cultural anthropology, andfolk studies. The main authors of his research are Lafcadio Hearn, Yanagita Kunio, and Dazai
Osamu.

Philosophical Aspects of Self-development and Self-destructionbyAlbina Gimkaeva
Bashkir State University, Russian Federation
As we know, our modern society today, with the list of its global problems ever longer, is in no shortage of signsof crisis. It has thus become particularly important for us to seek for ways of a promising development on bothindividual and social level. Keeping in mind that any development has its limits (as thought under the socioeconomic term "limits of growth"), here we focus the category of self-development (not as an absolute in itselfbut) as standing in a necessary relation, or in a dialectical pair, with the category of self-destruction.
Thus, relevance of this topic is justified by the interest of how these concepts correlate. Additionally, it
has not been sufficiently researched in the scientific and philosophical discourse.
Self-development is a philosophical category expressing a change in an object under the influence ofinternal, and regardless of external, factors. We consider this category from both philosophical and pedagogicalstandpoints. In a philosophical perspective, self-development is identified with the self-building of one's own
personality. In a pedagogical perspective, self-development is seen as a mechanism of "human formation."
For its part, self-destruction is a process opposite to the process of self-development. It is marked by thedecomposition of the system into its componental parts and the loss of interaction between them.
It would be untenable to consider the processes of self-development and self-destruction as mutually
exclusive, as we live in a world of instability and irreversibility, of evolution and catastrophes, wheredevelopment and destruction go side by side. Consequently, in the concept of self-development there is always asense of self-destruction, at least to the extent that there are limits to development. Likewise, the same applies tothe category of self-destruction as well, which too contains a sense of self-development, so long as any destruction
leads to something new. Along these lines of thought and based on interdisciplinary research, we proceed to assertthat self-destruction is inseparable from self-development and vice versa, as well as that the relation of thesecategories can be best understod in the light of dialectics.
Albina Gimkaeva is a doctoral student in the Department of Ontology and Theory of Knowledge at the Bashkir
State University, Ufa, Russian Federation. Her research interests are in the areas of ontology, theory ofknowledge, synergetics, and dialectics. The focus of her doctoral dissertation is on the philosophicalrelationships between the categories of self-development and self-destruction within the perspectives of dialectics
and synergy. She has done much of her work on it at the East China Transport University Jiaotong in China(2016-2017) and at "St. Cyril and St. Methodius" University of Veliko Tarnovo in Bulgaria (2018-2019). Email:albina.gimkaeva@mail.ru
12

Exceptions to the Free Movement of Workers in the European Union
by
Cristina Ilie Goga
University of Craiova, Romania
This presentation examines the free movement of the workers of the European Union as a form of the freedomof movement of the citizens of the European Union, based on the principle of equal treatment or nondiscrimination on the grounds of nationality. The presentation focuses on the two exceptions to this rule laid
down in Article 45, par. 4 TFEU and Art. 45 par. 3 of the TFEU. More specifically, it discusses the four exceptions
provided by the European Court of Justice for employment in public administration: public organizations
responsible for providing commercial services, public health services, public educational institutions, and nonmilitary research carried out in public institutions.
Keywords: free movement of EU workers; free movement of EU citizens; exceptions to the Treaty on the
Functioning of the European Union; exceptions of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Dr. Cristina Ilie Goga is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Craiova, and alawyer at Dolj Bar. She has a PhD. in Sociology (2012). She graduated in both Sociology and Law, having two
masters respectively in ”Public Law and Criminal Science” (Law specialization) and ”Community Development
and European Integration” (Sociology specialization). Her areas of interest are: legal sociology, sociology ofcommunication, and sociology of the European integration. Email: cristin_il@yahoo.com; Telephone:
0040766291455

Frostian Ambiguity in Russian Translations
byValeriy Hardin
American University of Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan
Robert Frost’s famous poem The Road Not Taken, structured as the narrator’s conversation with the reader seems
simple at first glance, and as contemporary literary criticism demonstrates its multiple meanings and ambiguity
have fooled many readers including critics themselves into an easy interpretation. The presentation first discusses
the ambiguity in the poem and shows that it can lead to different interpretations by readers using the original
English text. Then it suggests that the most plausible interpretation might be a matter of agreement – via
conversation – among the readers, with experts taking a part in this process. Further the presentation discusses
Russian translations of the poem with focus on whether they provide a fair access to the Frostian ambiguity to
Russian readers. It is shown that the selected translations, which have a fair claim to introduce Frost’s poem to
the Russian public, fail to deliver the complexity and ambiguity of the poem noted in the academic discourse andcomments on social media, and that they thus fail to offer to the reader its unique creative sense in its entirety. In
reality, these translations convey the content of Frost’s poem by various degrees of unwarranted additions,deletions (exclusion), and transformations of its original content in the Russian texts. These translations can be
regarded as poetic texts in Russian, but not as adequate renderinings of Frost’s poem. The paper claims that an
adequate translation of Frost’s poem in Russian needs to provide the reader with access to Frost’s ambiguity and“multiplicity of meanings,” and to convey to its readers the variety of views that the readers of the original have.
Dr. Valeriy Hardin is an assistant professor in the General Education Department at the American University ofCentral Asia. He has taught and worked in the USA, Russia, and Kyrgyzstan Currently teaches courses in Art,
American Literature, First Year Seminar, and Second Year Seminar. He is a rofessional translator andconference interpreter as well. His research interests include literature, art, language acquisition and usage,translation and interpretation.
13

Public Perception of Democracy and the Level of Civic Engagement in Kyrgyzstan
byRouslan Jalil
International Ala-Too University, Kyrgyzstan
There are a number of studies on democratic changes taking place in Kyrgyzstan. Such studies often examine
how certain aspects of democracy manifest in the functioning of institutions and in the organization of politicalprocesses. However, there is no significant literature on public perception of democracy and the level of civic
engagement in Kyrgyzstan. The Freedom House report, for instance, evaluates different indicators of democracy
such as political pluralism, civil liberties, and electoral process, etc., but due to its methodological approach, thisstudy does not tell us how people participate in political processes and how they personally perceive the concept
of democracy.
This research addresses the existing gap in the literature by examining the public’s attitude toward
democracy and the level of civic engagement. The study is guided by the question of how the society in
Kyrgyzstan perceives democracy and how people participate in political processes. The study is based on anationwide survey carried out in 2019, which examines public attitudes toward various dimensions of democracy
to learn the degree of civic engagement, and perception of democratic values and its aspects. The preliminary
findings demonstrate that the majority of people have distorted or incomplete knowledge about democracy as aconcept, and have little understanding about mechanisms of civic participation.
The empirical findings of this study will make several contributions to understanding the issue of how
democracy is perceived by the public, and how people actually participate in democratic processes in post-Soviet
Kyrgyzstan.
Rouslan Jalil is a faculty member at International Ala-Too University (IAU). He earned his MA degree in social
science and economics from the University of Bonn and the University of Hamburg (2006), Germany. In 2013,
he was a visiting scholar at Indiana University, USA. During 2006-2010, Rouslan worked as a research fellow at“ABH Institut für Sozialforschung”, a research institute in Hamburg. Since 2012, he is at the University of
Kentucky working on his doctoral degree. Rouslan is a co-founder and acting director of the Burana ResearchInstitute (BRI), a think-tank organization that develops solutions to the existing economic, social, and other public
problems through research and evidence.

The Utopian Drive or How to Journey Forward
byAlicja Kowalska,
DAAD & University of Presov, Slovakia
In my paper I will revisit Ernst Bloch’s work and the notion of futurity that can be derived from it, particularly
Bloch’s supposition of principle utopian impulses which can be traced throughout all forms of cultural expression.
Most importantly I will examine Bloch’s notion of thinking as a “venturing beyond,” a “dreaming forward,” ajourney that aims at conjuring up the “Not-Yet-Conscious”, the “Not-Yet-Become”. According to Bloch, “onlyknowledge as conscious theory-practice confronts Becoming and what can be decided within it.” How canBloch’s notion of thinking and dreaming forward be made productive within today’s political and cultural
framework? Marked by visions of inevitable destruction, futurity seems to no longer provide a home for ourutopian impulses. Is there a way to journey forward better, and what type of futurity must it entail?
I will investigate the development of Bloch’s thinking of utopia from the publication of The Spirit of
Utopia (1918) to his seminal oeuvre The Principle of Hope (1954). Published a century ago, The Spirit of Utopia
calls for the question of what has become of this supposedly crucial tendency in our thinking today. Has any
vision of our future become so marred by visions of impeding doom that the only way to remain “hopeful” andimagine futurity as a possible improvement on the present, is to wish for the past to return? Instead of yielding a14

sense of urgency that would lead to sustainable change the state of hopelessness has rather diverted our attention
to the past. Slogans about unclear and confused efforts to summon back the “greatness” of the past dominate ourpolitical discourses. Asking about the state of utopia today, most importantly about its potential to disrupt, I willturn to recent philosophical interventions such as Zygmunt Baumann’s Retrotopia as well as the main ideas andconcepts of time governing accelerationism.
Alicja Kowalska received her Ph.D. form New York University (2013) and is currently a DAAD-lecturer in
Presov, Slovakia. In her book project “Bildung and Rebellion. Youth in Literary and Philosophical Texts from
Johann G. Herder to Witold Gombrowicz” she investigates the revaluation of youth in 18 th and 19th century
German texts with respect to its implications for notions of modernity, theories of literary production, subject
formation, and 20th century polish literature. She has published on Heinrich von Kleist and Stanley Cavell, andis interested in representations of Germanness in American popular culture with respect to questions of trauma
and memory.

Historians Are Not Angels(Film, 80 min)by
Antoine de Mena
Independent Filmmaker, Spain/France
In 2012, a Japanese friend invited me to film an interview with Louis Sala-Molins, a France based Spanish
philosopher, known for his radical critique of power and for his work about the French slave ownershipregulation, the so called “Black Code.” But after this encounter emerged in me the desire to go further than amere interview. The desire to connect France, Spain, and Japan’s History in a global perspective, in an essay filmthat ended up interrogating the act itself of writing History.
Antoine de Mena is an independent Franco-Spanish filmmaker. He studied History (Sorbonne-Paris 4), Japanese
Language and Civilisation (Inalco, Paris), and Documentary Film Direction (Poitiers University). He lives andworks in Paris, France. Email: antoinedemena@gmail.com

Alive Painting(Art Performance)by
Akiko Nakayama, Artist, JapanI am a painter. I depict the beauty of conveying energy metamorphosis through a special Audio-Visualperformance. Combining the energy of movement and the vibrance of colors, I bring pictures to life. Called“Alive Painting”- it is a live performance of dynamically changing pictures and sounds. During the performance
I concentrate on altering the beauty of blending paints and philosophical meanings.
In my performance trips, mainly in Europe and Asian countries, very much along a correlation of Japaneseas my mother tongue, English as medium for communicating with people abroad, and the language of visual art(symbolism, metaphor), I have been interested in have a good learning experience of culture, both as visual artist
and as human. At the symposium, I will talk about formulating the original language during performance. Also,
I would like to talk to researchers from other genres of culture, talk about whether the language of art is understoodor greatly misunderstood, including beyond its original setting.
Akiko Nakayama is a Japanese artist exploring the intersections between panting, sound, and performance. She
calls her work "alive painting," and has already presented it around the Eastern and Western parts of the globe.
15

Her artistic interests and curiosities include the cross-cultural understanding of the language of art, as well as
the interactions between artistic and discursive languages. Email: akiko@akiko.co.jp; http://akiko.co.jp

Can Negromaniac be an Alternative to Eurogenism?
byIsaiah A. Negedu
University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa
Buffon’s monogenism paved the way for the emergence of the Western historicism. The domino effect of thisanecdotal classification led to a hyper-racial consciousness among the ‘black race’. In this paper, I will show how
Afrogenism is tied to Eurogenesis and how it can in turn be transformed into racial healing that takes into
consideration the inclusivity of the entire human race and engenders people to gravitate less towards color. I willfurther explain that negromaniac if properly channeled will lead to the extinction or rather gradual reduction ofracism. Thus, while acknowledging the fact of the existence of colonialism of other races outside the African
race; Africa will be used as a model for all other races that have been victims of racial classification. In the
fullness of time, I hope to chart a course towards desegregation in this paper. Methods abound in academic
discourse and to the extent at which each is used to investigate its unique problems and probably proffer solutions,
gradually its aim is achieved. I use conversation not as a school of thought but as a method to engage in critical
discourse in order that through dialogic, new concepts can be distilled from the old ones. I used it as a tool todeconstruct and reconstruct race.
Keywords: Race, Monogenesis, Black consciousness, Africa
Dr. Isaiah Negedu is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the College of Humanities, University of KwazuluNatal, South Africa. He also lectures in the Department of Philosophy at the Federal University Lafia. He is amember of the Conversational School of Philosophy. His research interests are; African/Race Philosophy, Socialand Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Law, Epistemology. He has published articles in academic journals inall the above mentioned sub-disciplines including; Alternation, Filosofia Theoretica, and he is a contributor to
the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Gender Roles’ Inequalities in Modern Kazakhstani Society
byOlga Nessipbayeva
Kazakh-British Technical University, Kazakhstan
For centuries people have been forming gender roles about male and female behaviors. Kazakh society is not the
exception and we have our own representations, beliefs about gender roles. This research paper analyzes the
position of men and women in the modern Kazakhstani society, the inequality markers for men and women in
Kazakhstan, the most acute gender issues faced by the citizens of Kazakhstan, and the measures necessary forsafeguarding gender rights and freedoms.
Studies show that most Kazakhstani men believe that the notion of gender inequality is contrived by
women. An analysis of women's responses indicates that they are more aware of the manifestation of latent, veiled
inequality. The majority of people asked indicated domestic work, childcare, and care for elderly relatives asspheres of women, and thus, of gender inequality, which still exists in Kazakhstani society. Equally, this confirms
the prevailing opinion about the low participation of Kazakhstani men in domestic work and in performing thefunction of care. Most of the participants believe that this situation is related to our traditions and customs, andthat it has been historically present in our society. A worrying indication is also that most Kazakhstani people
learn about gender policy mainly from the media (47.2%) and the Internet (20.2%), and that only 9.1% of
respondents answered that they learned it through the educational system. Such problems as unemployment and16high competition in the labor market were called common for both men and women. But the responses on themain problems that men and women face respectively are indicative of gender inequality as well. The respondents
named the most common problems for men as “high mortality,” “high incidence of cardiovascular diseases,” aswell as unemployment; whereas the main problems of women were identified as early pregnancy, unpaid
domestic work, double workload at work and at home, with the problem of domestic violence on the fourth place.
Dr. Olga Nessipbayeva is an Associate Professor in the Kazakh British Technical University, with 18 years of
pedagogical experience in higher education. Her teaching courses are Sociology, Political Science, and Social
Psychology. She is the author of more than 50 scientific papers published in Great Britain, Germany, Austria,
Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, and Kazakhstan. Her scientific interests are reforms and development
in higher education, social inequalities of modern society. She is an active participant in international scientificconferences on Western and Eastern Europe. In 2015 she was awarded Erasmus Mundes Post-Doc scholarshipat the University of Graz, Austria, in the area of Adult Education and Lifelong Learning. Email:olga_nessip@mail.ru

The Art of Translation as an Institutional Policy during the Abbasid CaliphatebyFrancesc Passani (University of Barcelona)
The list of languages that have attained the status of Classical Languages may be more or less extensive depending
on philological factors like grouping different stages of a language in a single denomination (not differentiating
between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit, for instance) or emphasising the importance of the current
availability of a wide range of literary sources (poetry, plays, philosophy, etcetera). Regarding their antiquity, thestatus of being a Classical Language is typically associated with a set of languages used Before the Common Era(BCE), namely, the epitomes Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Latin, Old Chinese, and Sanskrit.
Further, regarding the CE it is reasonable to split the period into two intervals of a thousand years each tocategorise Classical Languages. Thus, we can state that Early Modern English (Shakespeare’s language) and
Early Modern Spanish (Cervantes’ language) are two examples of Classical Languages within the second
millennium. But what about the first millennium?
In this article, we shall see that something truly remarkable happened during that period. For the first timein history, an explicit imperial policy based on the art of translation transformed a language mostly used forcommercial, religious, and bureaucratic purposes into a language of high literary standards that would become aClassical Language. The language in question was the Arabic used in the Umayyad Caliphate and the imperial
policy was the one dictated by Abu-Jafar Al-Mansur, the second caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate.
Dr Francesc Passani obtained his Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Barcelona with a dissertationon the Aristotelian and Platonic influences on the British author C. S. Lewis. His main field of interest is therelationship between Philosophy and Literature. He became a Modern Greek translator while working in Greece
as a Spanish language teacher. Currently he lives in Singapore, where he teaches Spanish. You can follow him
on his Instagram literary account, @frankpassani.

Cultures, Universalism, and Understanding: A Contemporary Reassessment of Relativism
byMiguel Angel Quintana Paz
European University "Miguel de Cervantes," Spain
An important threat to intercultural communication is relativism: the idea that each and every culture is sodifferent from all the rest that it is impossible to understand the concepts or values of any culture from the pointof view any other culture. It was an idea with a certain success in many different areas of study during the 20th17

century. To oppose this idea, philosophers have often tried to find what do all cultures share in common, with thegoal of making it a jumping-off point to reciprocal understanding. In this paper, though, we will try to oppose
relativist ideas without engaging in one or another idea of what all cultures might have in common. In order todo so, and with the help of Richard Rorty’s thoughts, we will explain why relativism is in fact anincomprehensible idea, and why, even in the case that we might be ethnocentric, it does not prevent us from
communicating with other cultures: in fact, quite to the contrary, it invites us to understand them and extend in
this way our own comprehension of ourselves. The use of other philosophical notions, as Davidson’s arguments
or ideas taken from the history of political liberalism, will be useful in this sense as well.
Dr. Miguel Angel Quintana Paz is a Philosophy professor at the European University "Miguel de Cervantes" inValladolid (Spain). He was Lonergan Post-Doctoral Fellow at Boston College and postdoctoral researcher
under the direction of Gianni Vattimo at the University of Turin. His latest books include Sapere aude, or Is It
Possible to Call Ourselves Enlightened yet? (2018), Rules. An Introduction to the Hermeneutics with the Helpof Wittgenstein and Sherlock Holmes (2017), and Normativity, Interpretation and Praxis (2014). He is aregular contributor to the internet newspaper The Objective and to the television channel of Castile and Leon.

Thinking as Waying and Homecoming: Heidegger and Lao-Tse
byRossen Roussev“St. Cyril and St. Methodius” University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria
North South University, Bangladesh
Heidegger's metaphorics of way (Weg) and home (Heim, Hause) offers a perspective for understanding both theepistemic and existential aspects of all thinking and philosophizing. His senses of way (Weg), waying (wëgen,Bëwegung), and woodpaths (Holzwege) point to the epistemic character of thinking, whereas the ones of theuncanny (Unheimlichkeit), homelessness (Heimatlosigkeit), and homecoming (Heimkehr) point to its existential
motivation. Way as pathway and method, waying as clearing and way-making, and woodpaths as ways with noproper beginning and end link thinking and philosophizing to a phenomenology of movement, i.e. a peculiar typeof epistemic journey. For its part, the uncanny state of Dasein in anxiety (Angst), later seen as the essential
homelessness of the historical man, conditions thinking and philosophizing existentially along the "conquest of
the planet Earth" and the "cosmic space," which would secure – upon a long waying – the anticipated calm of its
homecoming.
Remarkably, a similar sense of waying and homecoming can be isolated in Lao-tse's Tao-Te Ching. Most
generally, for Lao-tse, Tao is the 'way' of all existence and Te stands for one's individual adherence to that way.
While Tao remains "beyond the power of words" and is thus wu or nothing, it nonetheless designates the harmony
and balance of all there is -- all beings. It is thus also the way of Te, of one's mind and body, thinking and living,which dispels all strife and tension to ensures one's harmonious and peaceful co-existence along the rest of theworld. In this sense, Te can be seen as both one's way to and one's home in the harmony of Tao, whereas to theextent that Te becomes pressing in a possible loss of Tao, an actualized Te as a search for Tao is also one's waying
and homecoming.
That thinking and philosophizing can be aptly apperceived within the metaphorics of waying andhomecoming, can be also attested by the first record of a conjoined usage of philos and sophia, which is found in
Herodotus’ Histories. Herodotus uses the verb philosophein (φιλοσοφέων) broadly in the sense of desire to findout (a conjecture of both existential and epistemic meanings) and links it to ‘‘traveling much of the world for thesake of seeing it’’ (I, 30). Whereas in this primordial usage philosophy can be seen as a journey around the globe,
in our terms it reappears essentially as waying and homecoming.
Dr. Rossen Roussev is an Associate Professor in Contemporary Philosophy at “St. Cyril and St. Methodius”
University of Veliko Tarnovo, as well as a Visiting Associate Professor of Philosophy at North South University,
Dhaka. He has been a Visiting Associate Professor at the Kazakh British technical University, and AssistantProfessor at Kyungpook National University, Daegu, S. Korea, as well as at St. Johns University in New York.
18

He also taught at the University of Aktobe, Kazakhstan, the City University of New York, and Mercy College in
New York. He obtained his doctorate in philosophy from The New School for Social Research in New York (2005)
under the advisement of Prof. Agnes Heller. His interests include phenomenology, philosophy of language,
critical theory, and philosophy of culture. Among his publications is the monograph Philosophy and the Structureof Modernity: Fragments of Actualization (2005). He has also made a number of international presentations atconferences and by invitation in EU, US, Canada, China, Australia, South Korea, Singapore, Kuwait, andKazakhstan.

ARIES|fish(Performance)
Presented by PLUSKVAMPERFEKTUM
Performer: Sonja Indianna Salkowitsch
Music: Ipso Schaltwerk
Duration: 30 minutes.
Supported by the Arts Council Norway.
Teaser text:
In a faint memory, I float around in white noise. I have no shape. I stroke against other spirits, cuddling in theaether. Then it is my turn. I am born. This happens on the 21st of March 1974, at the shift of aries and pisces,
between fire and water, boldness and sentiment. It's the year of the tiger and the equinox of spring. You'd think
it would mean something special, yet my experience is not much different than anyone else's. This is my self
portrait, a perishable moment on stage, a little dance between chaos and cosmos....
PLUSKVAMPERFEKTUM is a Norwegian performance collective, consisting of siblings Per and Sonja
Salkowitsch. We find the substance for our creations in the space between life and death, between dream andreality where the micro cosmos of our inner self connects with the macro cosmos of a larger reality. We base our
performances on myths, dreams, ghost stories, character work and butoh, minimalistic stage installations anddark ambient soundscapes. Per composes the music, Sonja works the choreographies and concepts. Here she
makes the concepts and choreographies. Sonja studied at School of Stage Arts (DK) and has since worked with
InZhest, SIGNA, Cantabile2, Read Company, Kitt Johnson and more. http://www.sonjasalkowitsch.com/

Spirituality beyond Religion: Early Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore
byPriyambada Sarkar
University of Calcutta, India
In recent times, we find ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’ being distinguished from each other as ‘institutionalized
religion versus personal spirituality’, substantive religion versus functional spirituality, negative religiousness
versus positive spirituality’. 3 People appear to reject traditional organized religion in favour of an individualist
spirituality, which gives importance to the individual/personal mystical experience of the interconnectedness of
the universe.
In this paper, an attempt will be made to provide a picture of the transition from the domain of ‘thereligious’ to that of ‘the spiritual’ in the narratives of Rabindranath Tagore and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The worksof Tagore and Wittgenstein are generally conceded to be of seminal importance for their respective fields, Tagore
Brian J.Zinnbauer, Kenneth L. Pargament and Allie B.Scott, ‘The Emerging Meanings of Religiousness and Spirituality: Problems
and Prospects’, Journal of Personality, Volume 67, Issue 6, December 1999, pp.889-919.
319

in the field of literature and Wittgenstein in philosophy. Tagore was acclaimed as ‘poet of the world’ who wishes
to foster a philosophy of harmony in his innumerable writings, whereas early Wittgenstein was a philosopher oflanguage trying to sort out the relationship of thought, language, and reality in his work Tractatus Logico
Philosophicus. The two thinkers are conventionally seen as having very different interests and are usually studied
separately. In spite of these differences, a careful reader can notice significant similarities of structure in
Wittgenstein and Tagore, as far as their thinking about religion and spirituality is concerned.
In this paper, I would like to explore how both Wittgenstein and Rabindranath were not ‘religious’ in the
traditional sense of the term, while studying the journey of their lives. Also, I would like to wade through textual
remarks to discover how they succumbed to spirituality through ethical and aesthetical points of views. This
would ultimately unveil an extraordinary congruence between the journeys of early Wittgenstein and Tagore.
Dr. Priyambada Sarkar is a senior professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Calcutta, India. She
obtained her Ph.D. from King's College, University of London, on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. Email:priyambadasarkar@gmail.com

Situating the Social: Challenging the Mold in Central Asia and BeyondbyChristian Kelly Scott
Penn State University, USA
Many scholars have worked on contemporary sociological theory and research focusing
on social capital, networks, and support. Other scholars have pushed the envelope of sociological phenomenon
in the developing world with theoretical lenses including critical development theory, postcolonial theory,
feminist epistemology, and decolonial theory. What is seldom pursued is the nexus of these eclectic theoretical
approaches and their relationship with sociological conceptualizations of social capital, networks, and support.
This paper seeks to scrutinize these sociological phenomena and their applications in a non-western context.
Specifically, the paper explores the relationship between contemporary and classical critical theories, and ‘thesocial’ in rural mountainous Kyrgyzstan. With a post-structural conceptual framework, the Kyrgyz history oftribalism, pastoralism, Soviet imperialism, and post-independence transformations become a key factor in
identifying the efficacy of widely-accepted sociological phenomena in this context. By deconstructing the Kyrgyz
moral economy, nomadic legacy, relationship with nature, identity formation, subject construction, habitus anddiscipline establishment, and indigenous knowledge, the underlying social structure (consisting of capital,
networks, and support) is parsed out from the wider socioeconomic context. Following the examination of social
nuances in rural Kyrgyzstan, the paper assesses implications of these findings in a wider natural, regional, andinternational applications. Finally, discussion of practical implications, scholastic modifications, and potential
for future research takes place with an emphasis on international scholastic inclusiveness. The lessons gleaned
from this paper have relevance to the social science and development research focusing on rural and mountainous
places across Central Asia, and throughout the developing world.
Keywords: Social capital; critical theory; Kyrgyz Republic
Christian Kelly Scott, M.S., is a Fulbright Student Researcher at the Kyrgyz Republic. He is a dual doctorate
Ph.D. candidate in Rural Sociology and International Agriculture & Developmentin the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education at The Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, PA 16802.Email: cks8@psu.edu

20

Islamic Education in Kyrgyzstan and challenges to Women's Rights
byGulmiza Seitalieva, International University of Kyrgyzstan
Education is one of the key elements in shaping the worldview of a new generation. Therefore, any education
determines the real construction of the whole society, its core values, ideology and understanding of human rights.
Kyrgyzstan is a secular state but Islamic education continues to gain fast popularity. Thus, curricula research ofMadrassas and Islamic universities is important for understanding of their educational philosophy, goals, tasks
and values. Two field researches about Islam in frame of CARTI (Central Asia Research and Training Initiative)
Program were conducted. The second was devoted to study of curriculums. That field research covered among
15 Islamic institutions and 3 Theological departments across the Kyrgyz Republic. Curricula research andobservation of Madrassa students’ life brought unexpected conclusions. It seems that Islamic educational
institutions create new challenge to secularism, safety, and understanding of women’s rights in Kyrgyzstan.
Through the Islamic educational institutions religious fanaticism and patriarchal values spread out to Kyrgyz
society. Full revision of gender relations is happening.
Gulmiza Seitalieva, PhD, is an Associate Professor of International University of Kyrgyzstan. She graduatedfrom the Philosophy Department of the Moscow State University in 1987. She became Candidate of science (PhD)
of Moscow State University in 1994. Her main research interests are: Muslim women’s rights and Islamic
Education. She has a considerable experience as research scholar: Post-doctoral scholarship, Erasmus Mundus
SILKROUTE Program at University of Graz, Austria, 2015 – 2016; CARTI Program: “Islamic education in
Kyrgyzstan and Muslim students’ life,” 2012 -2014; Danish Institute for Human Rights, Copenhagen, Denmark,2009; Fulbright scholar at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 2007-2008, etc.
She has been also socially activity as president of the Aikido Federation of the Kyrgyz Republic since 1995.
She has 5th Dan. G. Seitalieva and was awarded by Honour Certificate “Epoch” for development of Aikido in
Kyrgyzstan from Ministry of International Affairs of Japan, 2015.

Societal Outcasts, Poverty, Inequality!
(perfomance)byBronwyn Sims,
Yale School of Drama, USA
This piece addresses the global and local issues of societal outcasts, inequalities of women, human rights,
sexuality, and poverty.
Using the world of physical theatre, improvisation, and movement as a platform to bring attention to those
who are struggling, poor, discriminated against, cast aside.This piece is for those who feel they have no voice ina society that promotes and rewards wealth, beauty, success, thinness, whiteness, youngness, fame, athleticism,and all the many other reasons we find “we do not measure up to.”“How long do we have to struggle before our voices are heard ??!!”
I will perform a solo, impromptu devised physical theatre piece that combines, movement, improvisation,
and audience interaction. This piece will teeter-totter between the worlds of clown and bouffon using humor andmockery to make a point. At one moment the audience maybe laughing hysterically at their own fallibility andthe next horrified that they must take responsibility for their part in why the world is the way it is…
How do we see ourselves? How do others see us?
My desire in this work is to shed some light and humor on these serious subjects and to give perspectiveon what it is like to be an outcast in a society that is not very compassionate or accepting of everyones differences.
I hope that it will create conversation and a dialogue so we can further our relationships with others both globallyand locally.
21

Bronwyn Sims is an actor, acrobat, choreographer, and educator. She has appeared in films and on television,
including in the Emmy award winning first season of The Sopranos. She has performed at NYC Opera at Lincoln
Center, National Black Theatre of Harlem, The Kitchen, La Mama E.T.C, HERE, Galapagos, among others. She
is a Lecturer in Acting at Yale School of Drama, and has taught also at The University of New Hampshire,
University of Florida, Marlboro College, Colorado College Summer Dance Festival, Colby College, New
England Center for Circus Arts among others. She is a Co- Founder and Producing Director of Strong Coffee
Stage Company. Email: bronwyn@strongcoffeestage.com

Ridding the World of Hate with the Help of Levinas
byIvelina Stoeva"St. Cyril and St. Methodius" University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria
We are literally living in a world which is constructed on the base of our subjective perceptions of the objective
reality. It fits together with our everyday relations with the Other. Before we become a part of a concrete unity
we first should answer a few questions like: Who am I? Who are the Others? And how am I distinguishing myself
from the others? If Otherness is not only in the Face of the Others, it's in our own Face too, why do we hate eachother?
We can come up with a bunch of answers which are at some point not exhaustive.
Emmanuel Levinas was a French philosopher whose work is related to existentialism, ethics, ontology,
and phenomenology. In his Totality and Infinity, Levinas insisited on preserving subjectivity not indeed on thelevel of purely selfish protest against the totality, but as openness to the idea of infinity. The positive side of theformal structure of subjectivity – to stay open to infinity in the concreteness of the primordial relationship with
the Other – is equal to conversation, which is precisely the ethical attitude, the subjection to the Other. Thus,
Levinas presents subjectivity as welcoming of the Other, with whom – along the ethical relationship – Infinity
begins to open to the subject.
Ivelina Stoeva is a Ph.D. student in Philosophy of Law and Politics at “St. Cyril and St. Methodius” Universityof Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, where she also obtained her master’s in Social Philosophy and bachelor’s inPhilosophy. The focus of her work has been on the conceptual metaphors and their relevance to social units. She
is also interested in ethics, aesthetics, art (especially poetry), and politics, as well as in various social and culturalissues of the modern world. Email: ivelina_stoeva_@abv.bg

Commedia dell‘Arte, Improvisation, and Blockchain Technology(performance)by
Rob Stupay, Artist, USA/France
I will do a workshop involving Commedia dell‘Arte, improvisation, and blockchain technology. The workshop
will use characters and events to explain both the hype and the use of blockchains. We will delve into the natureof identity and the nature of being secretive and keeping track of money with Commedia dell’Arte characters andcryptography. Dialogs may involve incomprehensible jargon rendered meaningful or at least incomprehensibly
specific.
Rob Stupay is an American artist based in Paris, France. His interests include visual and performing arts,
architecture, and computer technology. Email: rob@stupay.com

22

Beyond Orientalist Holism? The influence of East and Central Asian Thought on British Literature in the
Twentieth Century
by
Fiona Tomkinson,
Nagoya University, Japan
The paper (which is part of a wider research project) discusses the way in which three British/Irish authors, Iris
Murdoch, Lawrence Durrell, and Ted Hughes were influenced by the philosophical and religious thought of East
and Central Asia, by the texts and spiritual practices from the traditions of shamanism, Hinduism, Shintoism, andBuddhism. In different ways, all three authors considered the traditions in question to be a serious alternative tomore mainstream religious thought in the West and also to the dominating paradigms of Western dualism andWestern materialism.
My discussion of Murdoch centres on her relationship with the thought of the Zen master, Katsuki Sekida,
whose concept of pure cognition she discusses in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals and which, I argue, shebrings into connection with her understanding of Anselm’s ontological argument and Plato’s Form of the Good.
With regard to Durrell I will discuss the way in which he links Tibetan and Zen Buddhism with Gnosticism in
his major novels and philosophy. In the case of Hughes, I will focus on his use in his poetry of Hindu, Buddhist,and shamanic thought – in particular the influence of the Bardo Thadol and Journey to the West.
With reference to all three authors, I will discuss a question raised by the research of Edward Slingerland
in his 2018 Mind and Body in Early China: Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism – the question as to what
extent these authors are engaged in a flawed account of Eastern thought as a radical, holistic other. I will conclude
that the trope of anti-dualism in these authors is primarily a reaction against the ‘puritanical’ aspects of their own
culture which they rejected, and that their engagement with Eastern thought is too nuanced to be confined within
the paradigm of Orientalist holism.
Dr. Fiona Tomkinson is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Humanities at Nagoya University, where
she has taught since April 2017. Before relocating to Japan, she worked for almost twenty-five years in
Turkey. She lectured in the English Department at Yeditepe University, Istanbul, from September 1997 to January
2017, and also gave occasional Philosophy classes at Yeditepe and Boğaziçi Universities. She holds a BA and
MA in English Language and Literature from Oxford University and an MA and PhD in Philosophy from Boğaziçi
University. She has published widely in the areas of literature and philosophy, and is currently involved in a
research project concerning the influence of Central and East Asian religion, philosophy and mythology on
British authors of the twentieth century, including Iris Murdoch, Lawrence Durrell and Ted Hughes. Email:fgtomkinson@yahoo.co.uk

Wacław Szpakowski’s “Rhythmical Lines” as a Notation of Life JourneybyMaciej Zdanowicz
The Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce, Poland

Wacław Szpakowski is one of the most mysterious and significant Polish artists connected with avant garde quest,
abstract geometry, and transmedia practices on the border between visual arts and music. He sacrificed his life toart, especially to the radical minimalistic conception titled “Rhythmical Lines.” Only one line creates all seriesof drawings, complicated ornaments – mazes which are based on simple rules. This bold idea was born in theprovinces of Europe and Asia, between Lithuanian and Latvian villages, beyond big and important cities, beyond
art centers, and was inspired by rural wooden architecture and local folk art. He found the deep meaning of thefolk products, their essential relationship with life, the world around them, the same relationship that the ancient
Greeks saw in the meander pattern. The Wacław Szpakowski’s line is an expression is of movement, as pureenergy. Its complex meanders are patterns of changes, a natural rhythm which in the sense of the artist is an order,
a rule of each element of the world. In some way this line is also a metaphor of his difficult life which is spread23

between Siberian taiga and Warsaw, between his Polish home and another, imagined journeys to Samarkanda,
Granada.
Maciej Zdanowicz, D.A., is a member of the Faculty of Pedagogy and Arts at The Jan Kochanowski University
in Kielce, Poland.

The Backpacker
byKristoffer Zeiner, Artist, Norway/Netherlands
I am currently working on an idea of a backpack/wearable sculpture. This sculpture is for a performance in the
Old Church/Oude Kerk in Amsterdam for a performance piece on the 22end of February. I was thinking to makeanother one for the event in Bishkek. This sculpture is flexible conceptually and wearable. It will be designed totravel as normal big luggage on the airplane with a size around 150 x 100 cm. The travel and social interventionof this sculpture starts in Amsterdam, and the plan is that I will wear this every day during the event in Bishkek.
The sculpture is large and will not look like any ordinary back pack, its more like a turtle shell. It will be producedin carbon fiber, and will be containing small figure-like sculptures that I am planning to install in varies places
around the location of the event. At this moment I am thinking of and around the concept of territories, throughgifts or leaving things behind.
I figure that the backpack is a good start around the topic of a home/a container, as well as of making
territory. I like the fact of lifting... and making an additional part on my self. I will take up a bit of a subtle role
during the event, basically just walking around with this thing, but also leaving things behind, small ceramic
sculptures I bring in the back pack (the content inside can change). When referring to a backpack I meansomething that I am lifting with my back. Hopefully, looking like a very special device with a very specificfunction. The idea of "taking part" for the whole period of the event, applying a subtle territorial mark, but throughan uncanny and unclear approach. Hopefully, people wil start speculating around me and what im doing in thecontext of the event. The work will be documented trough video for later use. All the small figures will be
photographed and will be possible to view on a website. These small figures are like collectors items. It could beinteresting to think about a public moment as well, and maybe bringing something back from Bishkek, maybe
some kind of souvenir.
Kristoffer Zeiner is an Norwegian artist based in the Netherlands. His interests are in the visual arts andinstalations. Email: kristoffer.zeiner@gmail.com

24