This paper, originally an address presented before the Executive Council of UNESCO in 2010, presents the author’s views on the possible modalities of an intercultural dialogue, and links them to the somewhat controversial notion of a “culture of peace”.

Written in memory of the Indian historian Papiya Ghosh, this article tries to establish a dialogue between two different fields, Philosophy and History, and to see how the History of the past can be reassessed in the light of the modern developments of philosophy. The author analyses the raison d’être of History, which is to Humanity what the personal memory is to the individual. Facts are selected and interpreted as they mirror the historian’s biases and choices (that are never neutral), i.e. his/her personal philosophy, external pressures but also the evolution of the society. All meet a mainstream ideology that must be overcome or, at least, taken into account. Marxism and gender studies for instance re-examined whole parts of History and shed new light on wide aspects for-merly neglected by scholars. Inversely certain trends of Indian historiography such as subaltern studies provide a distorted vision of colonial society and tend to promote cultural nationalism while putting aside universal values that bring human beings together. The historical narrative changes and must change, however, not only according to newly discovered facts but also accord-ing to the evolution of ideas and human values.

The travels of the ancestral beings known as Wati Kutjarra (two lizard-men) are central to Western Desert cosmology. The results of their actions, markings and transmogrified forms are often seen in socially ‘open’ domains and cover and connect features over huge tracts of land. On the central Canning Stock Route of Western Australia there are detailed ethnographic records and ongoing observances of Wati Kutjarra by custodians at a number of ranges and water holes where pigment rock art occurs in shelters. At these same locales archaeological excavations have yielded ochres and occupational deposits which suggest these places have acted as aggregation locales through long periods of time. In this paper we explore the dynamics and genesis of socially constituted desert iconography through time.

This article reviews some of the major developments in the field of historical studies from the late 1970s onwards. It argues that many of these developments take their cue from the emergence of the narrative or linguistic turn which can be dated back to the 1970s. Foucauldian ideas were also very influential in giving historical studies a new direction from the 1970s onwards. In particular the article looks at the development of gender history, the history from below and memory history. Subsequently it reviews the diverse impact the narrative and linguistic turn had on traditional areas of history writing, including political, social, economic and cultural history. In particular the rise of the new cultural history from the 1980s onwards was deeply connected to the linguistic turn and resulted in a visual turn and in the opening up of new areas for research, among which the turn to material culture was of particular importance over the last decade or so. The article concludes by discussing the increasing move towards forms of interdisciplinarity and intertextuality and the popularity of transnational history writing (including comparative history and the history of cultural transfers), among which world and global history have had the strongest appeal of late.

Sotheby’s estimates between fifty and seventy percent of the Aboriginal art it sells at auction is bought by international collectors. How do those buyers view their acquistions? On the Sotheby’s website, you will not find Aboriginal art listed with ‘Australian’ and ‘Contemporary Art’ under the ‘Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture’ department. Rather, it is classified as one of the ‘Ancient and Ethnographic Arts’, alongside ‘Antiquities’ and ‘Pre-Columbian Art’.

This paper will show that the promotion and perception of Aboriginal art as ethnographic rather than contemporary in nature is but one of a number of important aspects of the market that have implications for the industry’s long-term sustainability. This distinction has a significant effect on the way Aboriginal art is distributed, promoted and received by buyers and sellers. Collectors measure the value of ethnographic material by assessing its proximity to a culturally immaculate source. An object has the greatest ethnographic integrity if it emanates from a primitive, isolated community.

Language is considered a defining property of humanity in ancient myths and in contemporary humanities disciplines such as philosophy and in linguistics. But there are competing views about what constitutes the capacity for language. One approach, known as the formal generative approach, regards the language capacity as autonomous from other cognitive abilities, and equates it with the syntactic ability to form an infinite number of sentences from finite means. Another, known as the functional approach, regards the language capacity as a non-autonomous symbolic system. From this perspective factors such as speech acts, narrative discourses, and frequency effects are as important as syntax for understanding the language capacity. Implications of work from these two perspectives for a broad range of disciplines, especially literary studies, are suggested.

Delivered on the occasion of the 2009 “Giulio Preti Prize”, this lecture examines and questions the contrast between the sense of intellectual crisis in the scientific world of the first decades of the 20th century and the absence of any such sense of crisis in current philosophy. Starting in the 19the century, we were confronted with changes in perspective that affected our relation to the universe we live in as well as to our own language and logic. Not only how we see ourselves but the tools by means of which we think about ourselves came into question. How would it be possible to rationally assess conceptual change that affects the very form of reasoning by which we assess

such changes? Such are the paradoxes to which philosophers and scientists, in the throes of crisis in the first half of the 20th century, tried to respond. Philosophers today may seemingly have overcome those aporias that vexed their recent predecessors, in denial of the existence of a crisis that should actually be a fecund source for reflection.

Contemporary museums continue to play a vital role in articulating powerful statements of national and cultural identity for broad and diverse audiences. Focusing on a range of global case studies – from recently instituted displays at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore to the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC and from the British Museum in London to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne – the author will consider some of the key challenges facing contemporary museums in their efforts to incorporate new insights and approaches to presenting art and culture in contemporary contexts. A particular focus will be provided on the problem of the repatriation/reunification of ancient sculptures and artworks, of which the Parthenon sculptures is a major case.

Since archaeology is fundamentally the study of the human past, which is what the word “archaeology” connotes according to its Greek etymology, it is part of the humanities. However, archaeologists work in teams with scientists and employ quantitative techniques and comparative methods of the social sciences; archaeologists are thus an academic hybrid and are pleased to live in the interstices of many disciplines. In this article we review the history of archaeology in the humanities and explore some new directions in archaeological research. We discuss the enduring questions of origins of the antiquity of humanity, religion and art, the first agricultural villages, and the earliest cities, states, and civilizations. We also consider new agendas in archaeology: historical archaeology, landscapes in the past and present, material studies of the present, and how archaeologists are engaged in modern politics.

This text reflects on the insights gained in the process of launching Art in Translation, the first journal dedicated to the best writing from around the world on the visual arts in English translation.

When art history gained academic currency in the later nineteenth century, it was doubly inflected by language. The subject matter was articulated along linguistic divisions, often reflecting national boundaries. At the same time, schools of art writing developed in the major European languages. According to the standard historiography, German was the dominant language of the discipline in the early years, superseded in the second half of the twentieth century by English. This account insists both on an agreed canon of art writing and on a hierarchical relationship between linguistic areas. From a post-colonial perspective both these positions must be challenged. A more differentiated reading suggests that in spite of the hegemonic power of these principle languages, art history has always been more fragmented, diverse, and written in many more languages. While the hegemony of the English language works against diversity, it offers as a global language the opportunity to communicate across linguistic boundaries. This text addresses the politics of translation in art history: the benefits and dangers of English-language domination. How does translation and its avoidance affect the flow of knowledge and the exchange of ideas? Is it possible, via the act of translation, to encourage a more pluralist and polyglot art history? Beyond these ideological dimensions, this article also investigates the ways in which translation theory enables a rigorous critical methodology that can advance thinking about visual culture.

The present paper is aimed to reveal the useful role that the archaeologist, evading from the ivory tower of his erudition of the societies of the past, may play for the change of the societies in the future. From two examples chosen in the XIX° century, we are focalizing on the very deep impact the archaeology may have in the society at a regional scale (the museum of Lubny in Ukraine) and at a worldwide scale (the Universal Exhibitions in Paris) for the evolution of the societies. Resulting from crisis due to internal mechanisms specific to our operation, the contemporary societies may collapse like the societies of the past. Such mechanisms have a systemic and non historical nature, which are involving us to discover the main processes, responsible of collapses. Then, the archaeologist, like the climatologist, may operate the knowledge of the past to forecast the happy or unhappy evolutions of the future. The archaeologist, servicing the contemporaneous society, may be useful, not only in discovering the remains of the past but also in making the inventory of the contemporary cultures as in forecasting the evolutions of the societies.

Unlike a widespread opinion, the constitution of objectivity (in Kant’s sense) does not require a strict, determinist, application of the category of causality to phenomena manifested in space-time. Some stochastic theories, using probabilities at their fundamental level, are just as able to constitute a domain of objects as determinist theories. In this paper, the conditions to be fulfilled for numbers to be considered as probabilities of intrinsic properties of an object of experience are displayed. These conditions, that synthesize George Boole’s relations and John Bell’s inequalities, are discussed in detail. Where they are not fulfilled, they make us suspect that it is impossible to achieve the detachment of an object from the instruments that give access to it.

The image of the city has always been an important source and tool for defining cultural communities that dwell within. Distinctive street patterns as well as the building scenographies in different cultures and periods document the technological, economic, and cultural capacities of the cities’ inhabitants. From Aristotle’s practical philosophy up to the current tourist view of the city, where the relics of the past – cathedrals, castles, or town halls – serve as symbolic attractors, the heterogeneous image of the city reveals interesting insights into the history of civilization. Beyond the abstract data used in economic or social sciences research – numbers of inhabitants, income, productivity, and other statistical information – the image (and also the imaginaries) of the city with its high cultural complexity is a topic of research for critical art history which offers unexpected and refreshing material for a transdisciplinary dialogue on the city as the most essential form of human culture. Since the beginning of the 21 st century, the city form and image have changed considerably, in quantitative and qualitative terms. The increasing number and size of the world’s megalopolises (cities with more than 10 millions inhabitants), mainly in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, marks a new epoch of city culture with different structural and aesthetic parameters than those of traditional Old European cities.

This article reviews, first, the new visual constructions of the megalopolis, second, its transformation into artistic and documentary images (photograph, film, digital art, etc.), and third, how they are catalysed into collective mental imaginaries. As an example, I examine Mexico City, a megalopolis of about 20 million inhabitants where cultural fragments of the prehispanic past, the colonial period, and the modern epoch have left their visual traces, to constitute a vital collage; one that has many contrasts as well as the occasional clash in cross-cultural processes. Supported by the recent tendencies of Bildwissenschaft (visual studies), this article tries to develop new perspectives of research on the critical phenomena at the beginning 21 st century from within the current polycentric and hyperurbanized world.

It is well-known that as a term, Nietzsche’s Übermensch derives from Lucian of Samosata’s hyperanthropos. I argue that Zarathustra’s teaching of the overman acquires new resonances by reflecting on the context of that origination from Lucian’s Kataplous – literally, “sailing into port” – referring to the soul’s journey (ferried by Charon, guided by Hermes) into the afterlife. The Kataplous he tyrannos, usually translated Downward Journey or The Tyrant, is a Menippean satire of the “overman” who is imagined to be superior to others of “lesser” station in this-worldly life and the same tyrant after his (comically unwilling) transport into the underworld. As a reflection on the life and the death of Zarathustra, this essay also explores the politics of kingship for Empedocles as reformer in terms of Hölderlin’s Death of Empedocles and Nietzsche’s unpublished drafts on the same topic. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche points to a perspective beyond the here and now, including the “values” of our all-too-worldly and all-too-human concerns, no matter whether in terms of perceived political/economic advantage, or indeed in the pursuit of more trivial satisfactions.

The humanities, particularly literature and the arts, seem always to have to justify their value and legitimacy vis-à-vis some other, more practical, more useful, or more authoritative aspects of human life and activities. In ancient Greece, Plato dismissed poetry as being untrue and irrational, but beginning with Aristotle, there has been a long tradition of defense of poetry in the West. Traditionally the most effective defense was to emphasize the moral values the humanities can teach and the exemplary significance of the classics. In the late nineteenth century, science began to challenge the value of the humanities, and in the twentieth century, that resulted in the “two cultures” debate in the 1960s. In more recent time, however, a real crisis of the humanities arises not from challenges from the outside but from within, as scholars in the humanities—particularly in literary and cultural studies—question the basic values of the humanities and “decanonize” the classics. The utilitarian tendency of modern society makes it difficult for the humanities to prove their practical use and worth. To argue for the value of the humanities, therefore, it is very important to refuse the utilitarian terms of debate, to reclaim the values of the humanities, and to re-emphasize the exemplary significance of the classic in order to work toward a better future not only of the humanities, but of our world at large.

This paper is to re-think the goals of literary studies at the hedge of the 21° century, questioning the idea of literature itself. Literature, as it is defined in Europe, is an ethnocentric notion, related to the theory of nation-state from the 19° century. National literatures are also the major frame for comparative studies. So literature and literary studies must change and focus on contemporary challenges: globalization and new media. Nowadays, literary studies and teaching can not anymore be so tightly linked with nation or democratic state building. Teaching has to offer a wider range of cultural marks for young people. From now on, the major goals of researchers might be a theoretical analyze of the process of representation by language itself (very similar for all human sciences) and an analyze of literature as a aesthetic activity (very similar in all types of societies).

What India produced others wanted. Others therefore wanted India. Although this by no means entirely explains India’s role in a polycentric world, it explains a great deal. It also helps us understand India as a fulcrum, at least within Indian Ocean trade. That is, the means by which India’s visual products became known and then coveted as well as the means by which India absorbed visual products from other centers of the world long before the age of call centers and other forms of outsourcing by which India engages in the present-day polycentric world.

My article for Diogenes examines four periods in India’s history that present opportunities to explore India’s role in a polycentric world as documented by visual examples. The first is the third-century BCE Maurya empire, which emerged in response to Alexander’s march toward the east. While we have some written documentation for India’s engagement with the Mediterranean, shared motifs and even the export of luxury goods beautifully fashioned from ivory document the engagement of two of the most important civilizations of the time. The second is the powerful seafaring and sea-trading Chola empire, which left its mark across Southeast Asia with the expansion of Buddhism and Hinduism, with scripts based on those of India, and with a Hindu temple of the thirteenth century, one very possibly designed and carved by Indian artists, whose remains are still to be seen in Quanzhou, China, the Zayton of Marco Polo’s writing. The third is India’s role in producing export textiles designed specifically for markets outside of India, for example, those of Southeast Asia but extending to the so-called Paisley prints and the plethora of words for textiles derived from Indian languages, e.g. Calico and Seersucker. Finally, the article examines Mughal paintings that incorporate European works and European artists, including Rembrandt, who copied Mughal paintings.