1.4: Interculturality. Thinking on the Frontiers
In European history, cultures most often interacted at the frontiers. It was there, at the intersection of languages, religious traditions, and political orders, that ways of thinking which cannot be confined within the boundaries of a single cultural milieu were created. At the frontiers, interculturality manifests itself not as an abstract slogan, but as an experience recorded in texts, biographies, and artefacts. In such contexts, interculturality does not mean a single encounter between ‘different cultures’, but long-term mechanisms of cooperation, exchange, tension, and negotiation of meanings. It is precisely these spaces of contact that are the subject of research conducted at the Sofia Casanova Centre for Research on European Borderlands.
Reflection on European history and culture is based on the assumption that cultural and civilisational processes are best analysed from a long-term perspective and in terms of their interdependencies. The initiator of this approach was Prof. Jan Kieniewicz (1938–2024). To this day, his work on the significance of historical experience in thinking about Europe and on the relations between civilisations remains an important point of reference.
The zones of contact most often discussed within the framework of European frontier studies are the borderlands of the First Polish Republic (including the “Intermarium” which is the area between the seas) and the Mediterranean region (the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, the Balkans). Our research is focused on the aspects these borderlands have in common, as well as on how they influenced the Old Continent and its status in different historical epochs. The researchers do not describe bilateral relations between isolated regions, nor analyse various types of parallelisms. Reflecting on borderlands as such allows them to grasp the Europe created in movement, dispute and dialogue, rooted in ancient tradition, but constantly reinterpreted.
The paragon of such an approach is Sofía Casanova – a Spanish writer, poet, and intellectual versed in Spanish, Polish, and Russian cultures. Her oeuvre presents an original and deeply thought-out idea of Europe viewed from the perspectives of two European borderlands which she knew and in which she lived. She operated within three distinct intellectual and civilisational circles – Spanish, Polish and Russian. Together, these regions formed a kind of axis connecting Europe from its western to its eastern ends. There, Casanova played the role of an intercultural translator, a facilitator of multi-threaded cultural transfers. Her texts which originally were targeted at Spanish readers, today allow us to see how the idea of Europe was perceived in two contrastive European borderlands, which were the places of complex intersections of identities, languages, loyalties and historical experiences. The Centre’s research develops this perspective, combining historical reflection with research questions concerning contemporary identity, memory and relations between European borderlands.
Women’s voices on religious frontiers
What did women’s voices sound like in an era of profound religious and cultural divisions? Manuscripts and early printed books produced in female religious communities in 16th- and 17th-century Europe show that convents were not only spaces for spiritual life, but also places for the exchange of ideas and texts across linguistic, political and confessional boundaries. An analysis of these sources reveals interculturality seen “from the inside” – through authorship, writing practices, and community. One example of this approach is the research project Mother Tongue: Textuality, Authorship and Community in Women’s Monasticism after the Teresian Reform (ca. 1560-1700), devoted to the work of nuns in early modern Europe.
The Balkans: memory, choice, forgetfulness
Is interculturalism a permanent legacy or does it result from choices, tensions, and forgetfulness? Research on the Balkans reveals that culture, history, religions, languages, and collective memories not only coexist but also compete in creating local narratives of identity. From an intercultural perspective, multireligiousness appears to be selective: some aspects of Jewish, Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim religious traditions are preserved and symbolically ‘tamed’, while others disappear suppressed by violence, migration, and national politics.
↑ Manuscript of a prayer to St. Teresa. Archive of the Discalced Carmelite Sisters of St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross in Wesoła (Krakow), (photo: J. Lewandowska)
↓ FROM THE TOP. 1 Ohrid (photo: J. Sujecka) 2 Cloisters of the monastery of Santa Chiara, Naples (photo: J. Lewandowska) 3 St Teresa of Jesus, sculpture in Abadia de Montserrat, Barcelona (photo: J. Lewandowska)