‘I Dialoghi di San Giorgio’//The architecture of Babel
Language is the skill that
distinguishes our species. It never ceases to change, arousing hopes
and regrets, multiplying our questioning and occupying new space amidst
the multiform structures of meaning in the global age.
Globalisation both exposes and exasperates the ambiguous connections that link languages to other disciplines or other aspects of social life. In politics, language can be an instrument of power used to integrate and include or to standardise and exclude. In educational strategy, what language skills does the new Babel require? In issues of integration or the conflict between civilisation and culture, what
role do old and new languages play, and how signicant are the
intercessions between languages that are different or of a different
nature in determining the conditions of civil co-habitation?
These
questions urge us to address more general issues, which are quite
interesting from a theoretical point of view. In the new Babel and
in an increasingly interdependent world, to what degree will language
still permit us to value individuality, autonomy and tradition? What
balance can be achieved between the languages required for global
communication and those of individual countries or minorities?
Citing Rilke, Heidegger once wrote that language oscillates between the
hand of the merchant and that of the angel or, in other words, between
the representation of the world as market and technique to its
interiorisation in man. If this is true today, is language ever more
firmly in the hand of merchant or is it still possible to conceive of
absolute expressive forms, disengaged from practical use?
These and other issues will be discussed by a select group of linguists, writers, sociologists, philosophers, historians, antropologists.
Information
General Secretariat
tel. +39 041 2710228 – +39 041 2710229
fax +39 041 5223563
e-mail: fondacini@cini.it segr.gen@cini.it
