| dc.description.abstract | The heterogeneous and multilayer structure of the book makes it an artifact (a literary piece
of work that makes itself) difficult to define. Its basic cultural functions remain unchanged but in
social conceptions and some of the reactions it evokes in its readers it can be related to cultural
and historical evidence from the distant past. The book traces early totemism and cannibalism,
and the remains of mask-and-tattoo cultures can be recognized. In its external, material layer, the
book is inhabited by recognizable symptoms and unrecognizable symbols, whereas its internal
layer, which consists of the text and the added editorial form, is like an alloy of both intellectual
and counter-intellectual ideas linked with hidden and overt anthropological myths. The symbols
appearing in the book have their cultural sources in either sacred or secular space and, according
to the author, are derived directly from Hebrew, ancient Greek, Hellenic, Christian and cabalistic
sources. In common space, the symbols of the book are a communication tool of secular power
and as such serve pragmatic goals of individuals, of the society and of the institutional power of
the country, in the political as well as technological and civilizational contexts. The external layer
of the book, depending on the technological level, is subject to descriptions in the categories of
finiteness, whereas its external layer is open to descriptions and interpretations in the categories
of infiniteness. The realizations of the world consistent with human needs of continuity, persistence,
order, logic, understanding and love, though present in both layers, are more evident in the
internal one. Due to them, the book serves the purpose of simplifying cultural adaptation. The
internal layer, commonly associated with the text is described in the perspective of logos myths,
i.e. the myths of the word and mind. Social ethoses, emerging in result of arguments on the truth
of logos, serve the consolidation of these myths. The author stresses the role of accidental contents
which are present in every text and guarantee that the culture has a creative character and is not
transformed into a utopia. In the case of almost every other book, a reverse situation also occurs,
as if through a book man tried to charm the world to make it friendlier. Thus the human will
and the subjection of the reality to a process of creating a myth are manifested, in extreme cases
leading to the creation of a book utopia. Mutual overlapping of accidental and non-accidental,
as well as intellectual and non-intellectual phenomena leads to the activation of the „book-play"
mechanism, which enables the explanation of many of the readers' behaviors. In the second part
of the dissertation, having made the assumption that utopias grow from social myths, the author
analyses the motives of books and libraries appearing in literary utopias from the 5th century
B.C until the end of the 20th century. Each complicated research problem requires the adjustment
of the adopted methodology. In this case, for the sake of his research, the author has worked out an
original way of verifying the cultural sense of the book based on structural elements taken directly
from Thomas Moore’s metautopia and Plato’s trilogy of utopian dialogues. Within the group of
problems governing the dominant paradigm, related with the utopias of the book dominating
in the society (Kritias), he showed the continuity of ideas from ancient and Biblical realizations
through Liber Mundi of Rosicrucians to contemporary realizations of virtual libraries in the epoch
of the Internet. On the other hand, Plato’s dialogue Fajdros served as the illustration of the presence
of the technical paradigm in the world of books. The author used it to arrange the realizations
on writings and book matters, present in the utopian literature, in the cultural perspective between
the extremes of technophilia and technophobia. The review led to the separation of the „utopias
of the return” to the epoch of androphagi (consumed books), oral (phonographic) books, and
„glass papyruses” forecasting the appearance of computer books. Cultural criteria used for the
evaluation of the printed book encourage the reflection on the foreseeable effects of a medial utopia,
leading directly to de-liberisation, i.e. the death of the printed books. The author tries to find
out whether, due to the utopian dialectic, deeply rooted in the human history, a new informative
order will emerge or the chaos will win - something that anti-utopian writers have long tried to
warn us against. The third of the paradigms, embedded in the context of Plato’s State, arranges
the problems of the book and libraries in relation to dominant utopian institutions. The book
encourages individualism and for this reason the “planned social order” utopias make it the object
of censorship. The victory of the utopian institution leads to the transformation of the book system
into the utopian system. The author used the examples of church and state censorships and
recollected anti-utopian postulates of John Milton. The history of censorship in the 20th century
proves that it is embedded in the history of social utopianism. Tragic fates of people persecuted in
totalitarian systems were accompanied by equally tragic fates of books which were burned, forged
or written for propaganda purposes. Collectivism and totalitarianism are not the only threats to
books. The author leads his considerations on the threats to books in the world of utopia to the
problem of threats in the world of eudemonistic utopia which, while luring the man with wealth
and hedonistic freedom, causes other addictions, equally dangerous to the past ones. In this context
the author reflects on the hypertext culture and the threats it poses for the printed book. The
book perceived in the anthropological perspective provokes questions on values in the situation
of social and civilizational threats. The final chapter of the dissertation is devoted to anti-utopian
guards of the personal ethos of „book-people”. | en_EN |
