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No. Nr (13), Oral History - Emotions 2019
No. (12), Public History 2018
No. (11), Cultural History of Knowledge 2017
No. (10), Anthropology – Folklore – History 2016
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No. (8), Anthropology and History 2014
No. 1 (6), Semiotics of History No. 2 (7), History and Gender 2013
No. 1 (4), On Representation No. 2 (5), Genealogies of Culture 2012
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No. 1-2 (1), Preliminaries
ISSN 2084–1418
The paper edition of the Anthropology of History Yearbook is the definitive version

2017, No. (10), Anthropology – Folklore – History

Zbigniew Libera
Piotr Kowalski’s ‘History of Understanding the World’

PDF version
Keywords: magic culture, pop culture, postmodernity, history, cultural and historical anthropology, semiotics, symbol, sign, simulacra

Abstract:
Piotr Kowalski’s impressive work, the content of all his books (thematically varied) considered as a whole, provides us with what was his conscious intention: ‘the history of understanding the world’. That consists of descriptions of ‘magic culture’ and ‘popular culture’ (postmodernity) as the ones which are separate beings; there is no historical continuity between them as if ‘the history of mentality’ was made of two phases and meant a transition from symbolic forms to conventional signs. He described that history as the history of the signs and texts, the process of losing the referentiality of semiotic forms. Thus, the totally different types of culture, ‘the magic culture’ and ‘the postmodern culture’, require different interpretational methods. The presented article is a study of the essential claims by Piotr Kowalski, on which of his publications are based.

About Author:
ZBIGNIEW LIBERA - ethnologist, full professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. E-mail: z.libera[at]iphils.uj.edu.pl

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