Between ownness and alienness : towards the dialectic of cultural heritage

The article Between Ownness and Alienness: Towards the Dialectic of Cultural Heritage is an attempt to present cultural heritage, or cultural identity, as an effect of two basic factors: that which is one’s own, and that which is alien. “Ownness” and “alienness” are the most general categories of our interpretation of the world, one of the most important categories that enable us to perceive, describe, and organize reality. The dividing line between the two would define the area of cultural heritage. Drawing on the thought of Heraclitus (especially fragments B 8 and B 122) the author first discusses the dialectic of oppositional categories of “ownness” and “alienness”, proceeding to describe the immanently cultural occasion of an “encounter with the alien”, drawing on the ideas of Kant, Scheler, Heidegger, Gadamer, Lacan and Waldenfels, to round up his argument by linking his reflection to the question of cultural heritage, which - in view of the whole reasoning - appears as a historical record of the encounter with alienness. The author refers to the literary oeuvre of Gombrowicz and the painting of Nowosielski as examples creative output linked to the question of ownness and alienness.