A reductive generalisation holds that the principal feature of captivity is exclusively political—because Europeans and their philosophical tradition tend to assume that everything begins with Western modernity. This verdict has persisted to the present day. As a consequence, the studies and the philosophy of captivity have stagnated, or have gravitated toward the domain of imprisonment and incarceration as regenerated by philosophers such as Michel Foucault. The present study proposes a new poetics of captivity, tracing the genealogy of the concept up to the digital captivity of our time, which surpasses all post-totalitarian forms of captivity. Unfortunately, conceptual discussions have receded precisely in those spaces that have concretely experienced socio-political and psychological forms of captivity at a collective scale. The question is whether captivity and ethics maintain differing relations. It is implicit that such discussions presuppose the criteria of liberty and democracy; the notional subtleties are therefore all the more interesting. Captivity remains one of the most powerful fluid concepts—transforming and rapidly adapting to all the major sciences, evoking past and future in scenarios that become concrete reality. A poetics of captivity entails, at the same time, a new perspective for the study of the social-human and literary disciplines.
International publication exchange continues to generate interest within the field of librarianship. For decades, such exchanges have represented a strategic way for university libraries, directly supporting scholarly communication, collection development, and institutional visibility. In the context of digital transformation, open access policies, and evolving research dissemination models, traditional exchange activities are undergoing significant changes. This paper analyses recent trends in publication exchanges within a university library, highlighting the shift from print-based practices towards hybrid and digitally oriented collaboration models. It examines the impact of budgetary constraints, evolving acquisition policies, and the growing prevalence of electronic resources on exchange programs.
This article examines the theology and anthropology of prayer in two foundational figures of early Christian mysticism: Origen of Alexandria and Evagrius Ponticus. Drawing on a close reading of primary sources-chiefly Origen's On Prayer (Peri euch & emacr;s) and Evagrius's Chapters on Prayer (De oratione)-the study traces the conceptual development of contemplative prayer from Origen's pneumatological framework to Evagrius's systematic theory of "pure prayer" (kappa alpha theta alpha alpha rho pi rho omicron sigma epsilon upsilon chi eta). The article first analyses the Evagrian understanding of prayer as a "state of the intellect" (kappa alpha tau alpha sigma tau alpha sigma iota sigma v omicron u) that transcends all mental "representations," situating it within his broader ascetic and contemplative system. It then traces the philosophical antecedents of Christian prayer, comparing the approaches of Clement of Alexandria and Origen with those of pagan philosophical schools, particularly Platonism. The central section of the study investigates the anthropological distinction between nous and pneuma in both Origen and Evagrius, examining how each thinker assigns distinct roles to these faculties in the act of prayer, with particular attention to their differing interpretations of 1 Corinthians 14:15 and Romans 8:26. The article argues that Evagrius's decisive contribution lies in his transformation of the Origenian concept of the "praying intellect" into a rigorous experiential and tactical discipline, anchored in the "antirrhetic method" and oriented toward "imageless" communion with God. This shift had a lasting normative impact on Greek, Latin, and Syriac contemplative traditions in Late Antiquity and beyond.
