Ideological Horizons Research Articles

Strengths and Limitations of Different Teaching Modes:

Whether in language teaching or elsewhere, sustainable attainment of a pedagogical goal is closely related to a successful teaching mode. In a bid to have a gambit in a teaching procedure with a proper choice of a teaching mode, a teacher is expected to be well acquainted with the strengths and limitations of the prevailing teaching modes. Regarding this, over the years researchers have made efforts in exploring the immense ideological horizons, while in our country, still, lecture mode is the most commonly found one. Along with making thorough study of different aspects of various teaching modes, this current study scrutinizes some practical cases and examples in the academic context of Bangladesh. It attempts to recommend the optimum success level of lecture mode and to which extent lecture mode needs to be alternated or to be assimilated with others as well as how to minimize the weakness of it and ensure the maximum potentiality of the other teaching modes, basing on the established ideas in this field and the empirical studies done by these authors.

В столетнем цивилизационном противостоянии: преодолимы ли расколы и политическая вражда в России?

The article reviews the monograph “Philosophers’ steamboat”: 100 years without repentance” by A.N. Chumakov. He analyzes the situation of the age-old confrontation in Russia between ideological groups with mutually hostile radical rhetoric. And the tension of this confrontation is not only not decreasing, but is also moving into modern spheres of communication, such as the Internet and social networks. The purpose of the review is to briefly present the sequence of the author’s arguments in solving the designated problem, outline its ideological horizons and offer a polemical framework of possible ways to overcome this long-term confrontation. The review critically discusses the merits and controversial points of the monograph. It is noted that two explicit dimensions can be distinguished in it: journalistic and memoir aspects. The active journalistic principle in the book organizes its main meanings and pathos. It is characterized by passion and polemical energy, being at the same time much shorter than the second one. The memoir constituent of the book is calmer and more conclusive, but it is burdened with an abundance of details and documents, sometimes thereby complicating the reader’s perception. The author expresses his position in the rhetorical phrase “100 years without repentance” that is included in the title of the book and carries its main meaning. However, he demands this repentance only from one of the sides of the confrontation. But this will not happen, since mutual anger continues to this day. It is possible to reduce this confrontation only through mutual repentance (and forgiveness).

Из русского «Марбурга» в США: старое вино в новые меха?

The conceptualization of ideological influences in philosophy is usually unidi­rectional: from tradition-source to tradition-recipient. The history of Russian neo-Kantianism demonstrates other possibilities for conceptualizing philosophi­cal reception: documenting the facts of reverse influence forces us to look for new ways of interpreting this philosophical movement. The uniqueness of the his­torical situation, which cannot be ignored when analyzing the fate of Russian Neo-Kantianism, makes it necessary for the historian of ideas to turn to the study of intellectual biographies, professional connections, and in general the “sphere of conversation” in which the transformation of the ideological horizon took place. The emigration of intellectuals from Russia in the late 1910s and early 1920s, termed the “philosophers’ ships”, not only provoked unprecedented exis­tential shifts in individual personal trajectories, but also gave rise to new intel­lectual phenomena, conceptual networks and cultural-institutional clusters. Re­constructing the intellectual biographies of two Russian thinkers, Simon Kaplan and Jacob Klein, whose philosophical development took place in the symbolic Marburg, we uncover difficult problems of self-identity, intellectual relevance, and creative fulfillment in emigration. Kaplan, fascinated by the philosophy of religion of Hermann Cohen, head of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, found himself in demand in the United States in the innovative “Great Books” educational program as an expert on Kant and the Bible and as the translator of Cohen’s major work on the philosophy of religion into English. Klein brought to the New World a reputation as an expert in the history of ancient mathematics and Renaissance science, revealed himself as an expert in Plato’s philosophy and an excellent organizer of the educational process, and contemporary research in­terest turns to him as a phenomenologist.

From Individual to Community: Geometry as a Mediating Tool in Jan Verhoeven’s School Architecture

Drawing from Aldo van Eyck’s theories of ‘twin phenomena’, the Dutch architect Jan Verhoeven (1926-1944) found in the manipulation of geometrical patterns a powerful design tool for reflecting on the duality of individual and community. Despite the key contribution of Verhoeven's work to the emergence of Dutch structuralism, and although it was acclaimed by critics and the wider public at the time, that work has not received the academic attention that it deserves, overshadowed as it is by other figures of his generation, such as Herman Hertzberger, Piet Blom, and Joop van Stigt. Expressed in all his projects is a keen interested in the symbolic and existential meaning of geometry, a meaning unabashedly loaded with classical connotations from the point of view of the design process yet manifesting in a daring vernacular appearance in its built form. This is especially true of the eight nursery and primary schools that Verhoeven designed from 1973 to 1984. This paper focuses on analyzing Verhoeven’s first two such projects, the schools in Rozendaal and Cuijk. In both projects, he tried to bring architecture close to its users through formal, constructional, and perceptional resources  - directly derived from the application of geometry - while accepting a general European trend towards the wearing away of the modern movement in favor of a transition to other aesthetic and ideological horizons.

The father of ‘sovereignism’: d'Annunzio in Fiume between the crisis of liberalism and the critique of democracy

AbstractThe essay investigates the occupation of the city of Rijeka (1919–20) by an irregular army led by Italian poet Gabriele d'Annunzio, focusing on the concepts of sovereignism and populism. While people with different mentalities and ideological horizons took part in the endeavour, it was d'Annunzio that gave the occupation its profound meaning. The poet attempted to put into practice his political vision centered around a ‘noble people’, composed of warriors and producers, opposed to the liberal elites and in competition with revolutionary socialist movements. In this sense, the Free State of Rijeka grew into the prototype of a new society based on the integration of racial, plebiscitary, corporate, aesthetic, and political themes. At the same time, the city became a beacon of opposition to the new international order proposed by US president Woodrow Wilson, since it advocated and worked towards the birth of sovereignty for small countries resisting new supranational bodies such as the League of Nations.

Dissensus and the Politics of Transnationalism in the Cinema of Želimir Žilnik: A Case Study of The Most Beautiful Country in the World

The paper takes as a starting point the concept of dissensus understood by the French philosopher Jacques Rancière as a gap in, or a redistribution of the right to speak, to see or to be seen. The paper further asserts that dissensus, thus understood, perfectly encapsulates the efforts of the post-Yugoslav filmmaker Želimir Žilnik: to intervene in representational order and render visible the socially marginalised and invisible. The notion of political cinema, usually associated with Žilnik, is here redefined as a practice geared towards changing the rules of visibility and towards a redistribution of the authority/right to speak and be seen. The paper also emphasises the immediacy of representation in Žilnik and argues that Žilnik’s ideological horizons revolve around Marx’s concept of immediate experience, rather than around historical Marxism. Lastly, the paper relates Žilnik’s early interrogations of social exclusion to his later preoccupations with displacement and exile and focuses on the author’s 2018 film The Most Beautiful Country in the World. In conclusion, the paper puts forward the suggestion that Žilnik’s last film, while showcasing some of its author’s long-standing views of exile, brings forth a new, transnational and socially pragmatic vista on the processes of integration and acculturation.

Tu voz en mi garganta. Lecturas de cabecera de Pablo del Águila

A writer is always inscribed in a specific ideological and literary horizon, with all that that implies. The eternal tension between reading and the empty blank page is configured and articulated through writing; anchoring us to a specific tradition that, in turn, commits us to a historical reading of literature. This last question, the commitment, decisively configures not only the literary tradition in which Pablo del Águila is inscribed: Celaya, Otero, Vallejo, Brecht, among others, as well as the different readings that literary criticism has issued on this tragic writer from Granada. And here appear other names: Juan Carlos Rodríguez, José Ortega, Jairo García Jaramillo and Elisa Sartor - with this we offer only a sample -. Through these and others (and their corresponding readings) we will trace the authors of the writer from Granada’s nightstand; and how these readings commit him to a specific ideological horizon: writing understood as an instrument of ideological struggle

Somatic human rights in modern conditions of technological transformation of body existence

The article raises the problem of updating the research of somatic rights in the context of the intensive impact of modern technologies on the human body. The legal and philosophical and worldview foundations of somatic rights structure the problem. In particular, the identification of the causes of their occurrence and the establishment of a content-genetic relationship with other generations of human rights made it possible to determine the specifics of somatic rights and attribute them to a new generation of human rights. Philosophical and worldview are presented as ideological prerequisites and semantic horizons for the development of somatic rights. State of the philosophical and worldview foundations raises the question of the ontological status of somatic rights, which, in turn, led to the need to highlight the forms of being of the expanded body. As a result, it is concluded that in relation to up-to-date technologizedforms of bodily existence, somatic rights should perform the function of demarcation between morphological freedom and arbitrariness.

Образовательная роль эстетического оценивания архитектурных объектов

The paper aims to justify reasonability of using the aesthetic evaluation procedure in architectural education. The article considers the process of aesthetic cognition of architecture within the course “Aesthetics of Architecture and Design”, emphasizes the necessity to acquire practical experience represented as aesthetic conceptions. Scientific originality of the study involves developing a technique to assimilate architectural environment - aesthetic description of an architectural object. The conducted research allows concluding that the suggested technique helps to consolidate theoretical knowledge in the sphere of aesthetics and promotes harmonious development of a student-architect as an artist and creator broadening their theoretical-cognitive and ideological horizons.

1968 In Yugoslavia

This essay presents Yugoslav 1968 as a student revolt. Focusing on the developments in Slovenia, the Socialist Federacy’s northernmost republic, it shows the uneven development of the student movement in various university centres, while describing its ideological horizon and theoretical background. The essay contends that the economic reform of 1965 strengthened the capitalist processes in Yugoslavia to the extent that later reforms were unable to contain them. The student movement was able to diagnose the critical contradictions (bureaucratic domination and the capitalist subversion of socialist processes), but failed to mobilize a mass socialist movement. While post-1968 theory developed a stronger conceptual apparatus, it remained trapped in the ideological struggle against the domination of political bureaucracy, and consequently failed to confront the restoration of capitalism. This is the main reason, the essay argues, why a Yugoslav theory that was able to hegemonize the global theoretical discourse of the 1990s (as the “Ljubljana Lacanian School”) was unable to theorize and intervene in the dissolution that the same decade brought to Yugoslavia itself.

Postmortem Punishment in the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19-31): Between Coherence and Indeterminacy of Luke’s Eschatology

Taking as its point of departure the commonly recognized tension between the image of postmortem punishment in Lk 16:19-31 and other Lukan conceptualizations of the afterlife, the article examines the said image against the background of Luke’s overall eschatology. In the first step, both Luke’s bipolar ideological horizon and the conjunction of eschatology and wealth ethics are brought to light, demonstrating general coherence between the parable and Luke’s eschatological perspective. The parable’s presentation of the post-mortem punishment as immediate and final is affirmed. In the second step, elements of indeterminacy in Luke’s eschatological perspective are explored. Through the workings of metalepsis, the rich texture of Luke’s narrative is shown to generate additional possibilities for interpreting the rich man’s punishment. It follows that the precise nature of the punishment – its final as opposed to intermediate character – cannot be said to be completely unambiguous.

«Golgotha» by Les Gomin in the context of anti-religious / ateistic kitch of Ukrainian literature of the 1920–1930s

The phenomenon of anti-religious / atheistic kitch as a poster-monumental variety of mass Ukrainian literature of the 1920–1930s is investigated. Cultural and historical factors that influenced Ukrainian literary process of the first third of the twentieth century (industrialization, collectivization, anti-church struggle on the one hand, the origin and formation of social realism as a «leading artistic method» on the other hand) are determined; general trends in the development of fiction within the framework of socialist-realistic canon are identified, the relationship between the most important phenomena of public life of the specified period with the thematic and ideological horizons of word art is established. Topicality of the study is due to the novelty of the topic which is understudied in domestic litera, as welture studiesl as an appeal to the works of Les Gomin – prose writer, literary and theatrical critic, journalist, scientist, teacher, an active participant in the literary life of his time, editor of literary and critical journals, researcher of Ukrainian folklore, repressed in the 30s.It is argued that the greatest impact on public life of the 20–30s of the twentieth century was made by industrialization, collectivization, and anti-religious propaganda – three directions of the policy of the Communist Party, which aimed to take control of three main areas of human life: craft / urban, completely rebuilt in accordance with the new realities; agricultural / rural, for centuries based on the relationship of the peasant with his mother-land; spiritual / religious, declared unnecessary, unwanted, obsolete remnant of the bourgeois era. As a result of this, three directions of the Soviet ideological kitch appear: production and household, rural / collective farm, anti-religious / atheistic. Each of them has its own markers, iconic details, emblematic images and thematic horizons. Their common features include artistic replication, artificiality, optimistic predictability, schematic types of characters declared by ideological censor of the 1920s and 1930s. The phenomenon of atheistic / anti-religious kitch is considered in a theoretical aspect; the features of the poetics of literary texts related to this variety of kitch are analyzed. It has been established that in the discourse of anti-religious / atheistic literature characters of hero-communist, endowed with a bright mind with clear party attitudes, and his indispensable antagonist-clergy (clerical) – a priest, church elder, watchman, key-keeper, etc. are formed. Depending on the plot and the author’s intention, the collective character of the crowd – «dark», uneducated, superstitious, or, on the contrary, resolutely opposed to «priests» who «deceived the people for centuries» may also appear in anti-religious works. However, it is noted that Ukrainian literature is not at all full of a large number of purely anti-religious works; as a rule, anticlerical motifs perform a secondary function in works of other subjects.The object of the article is Les Gomin’s novel «Golgotha» (1933), as well as ideological and thematic related stories of A. Liubchenko «Strangers» (1930), I. Mykytenko «From Hot Days» (1924), and the novel by A. Golovko «I can» (1922). Based on a comparative analysis of the above-mentioned works, the formation of an atheistic tradition in the literature of socialist realism is traced, the main components of which are a negative character of the clergy, the vulgarization of its representatives; the development of a special type of anti-hero – a priest or layperson as a representative of the enemy class opposed to the Soviet regime, a potential «enemy of the people»; condemnation of darkness and superstition allegedly generated by the blind fanatical faith of an uneducated population; emphasis on inhumanity of religious morality, which constantly prohibits something; levelling the very idea of God as a remnant of a pre-revolutionary bourgeois worldview.As a result of an attempt to read the above-mentioned works in line with postcolonial criticism, the ontological nature of the conflict in anti-religious / atheistic kitch is established, due to the tragedy of the disoriented personality in the system of dented values; it is noted that actualization in literature and other forms of art of atheistic motives in any historical period testifies not only to the levelling and vulgarization of religious truths, but also reflects the degradation of spiritual and moral appearance of the people, decline in its general culture.

Cruel Festivals: Furio Jesi and the Critique of Political Autonomy

This article evaluates Furio Jesi's conception of mythic violence, focusing in particular on his theory of revolt as a mode of collective experience qualitatively distinct from that of revolution. Jesi offers both a descriptive phenomenology of how uprisings alter the human experience of time and action, as well as a critique of the "autonomy" these moments afford their participants. In spite of their immense transformative power to interrupt historical time and generate alternate forms of collective subjectivation, the event-like structure of revolt also harbors within it a unique set of dangers. Such creative mutations risk trapping political actors within a relational logic of the exception, a "ban" structure that, although distinct from the atomization that governs normal time, ultimately works to reinforce it in the long run. The article concludes by suggesting that Jesi's late concept of the "cruel festival" offers a troubling premonition of our current era, in which revolts proliferate in the absence of any ideological horizon of revolution.

Edificios máquinas: Arquitectura Moderna y disciplinaria del Frente Popular en Tocopilla

This article describes an architecture production process supported by the Modern Movement in the city of Tocopilla during the Popular Front’s administration. Urban, social, architectural and biopolitical aspects are discussed as ideological horizons that triggered governmental action facing a socioeconomic crisis.

Lending Power: How Self-Help Credit Union Turned Small-Time Loans into Big-Time Change by Howard E. Covington Jr.

Reviewed by: Lending Power: How Self-Help Credit Union Turned Small-Time Loans into Big-Time Change by Howard E. Covington Jr. Alec Hickmott Lending Power: How Self-Help Credit Union Turned Small-Time Loans into Big-Time Change. By Howard E. Covington Jr. (Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press, 2017. Pp. x, 211. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8223-6969-1.) In Lending Power: How Self-Help Credit Union Turned Small-Time Loans into Big-Time Change, Howard E. Covington Jr. tells a remarkable story. Beginning with a 1983 bake sale that raised seventy-seven dollars, Self-Help Credit Union grew into a major institutional force that supplied thousands of loans to low-income families and predicted the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. The story of Self-Help and its founder and driving force, Martin Daniel Eakes, is a history worth telling, and Covington does so ably. The book is also timely. Covington’s work dovetails with emergent scholarship that has sought to link the history of race and social movements to the history of American finance and banking, recently exemplified by the work of Mehrsa Baradaran and Shennette Garrett-Scott, among others. Lending Power is also a worthwhile contribution to the history of antipoverty work in North Carolina, a state that has functioned as a laboratory for such efforts from the 1960s onward. Beginning in the early 1980s, Self-Help’s work was animated by a commitment to bring low-income Americans into the orbit of American finance. Principally, Self-Help sought to extend mortgages to families who had been denied loans by established lenders. Covington also details Eakes’s lobbying efforts to enact regulations against the predatory lending practices that emerged in an era of increasing deregulation, and he explains how the creation of a policy shop (the Center for Responsible Lending) gave the organization an important voice in both state and national discussions about the reform of banking law and the financial system. In the 2000s, Covington shows, the center not only anticipated the 2008 financial crisis but also was influential in the debates about financial regulation and consumer protection that followed. While effective as a narrative that combines a history of Self-Help’s evolution with clear explanations of complex financial processes and mechanisms, Lending Power at times lacks explanatory power. Most important, Covington [End Page 966] does not spend much time providing political, intellectual, or economic context for the work of Self-Help or Eakes. This is in part a function of the sources that the account relies on, which are largely interviews conducted by the author. The core of Eakes’s vision, Covington contends, was a belief “that democracy’s very survival depends on a level playing field for all in the economic marketplace” (p. 4). Though it is hard to contest the idea that “the spirit of the 1960s was fresh and alive” in the work of Eakes and Self-Help, Covington could have assisted readers with a more precise articulation of the ways the conservatism of the Ronald Reagan administration reshaped the intellectual, political, and ideological horizons of American social movements as they became increasingly institutionalized (p. 20). Nonetheless, Lending Power is a lucid history of an organization that was, in many respects, pathbreaking in its recognition of the structural conditions that drive what social scientists have now belatedly recognized as a persistent racial wealth gap. Covington illustrates this point in a memorable juxtaposition of Eakes and Angelo Mozilo, the chief executive officer of Countrywide, who argued publicly that his mortgages were sold as a means of “increasing homeownership opportunities for those who have been traditionally left behind” (p. 117). But it was Countrywide’s toxic subprime mortgages—extended on predatory terms, a world removed from those extended by Self-Help to low-income borrowers—that played a significant role in once again expanding the racial wealth gap. Covington’s account of an alternative model of banking, credit, and economic empowerment thus suggests both the historical and the political imperatives of excavating the voices who have long occupied the sidelines of debates about the organization of American capitalism. In this regard, Lending Power is an important intervention. Alec Hickmott Amherst...

Jerzy Stempowski i Lew Szestow – egzystencjalizm spowity wschodnią melancholią. Krótka historia przyjaźni

Jerzy Stempowski and Lev Shestov — existentialism imbued with eastern melancholy. A short history of a friendship: The main objective of this article is to present the friendship between Jerzy Stempowski — Polish writer, essayist and Lev Shestov — Russian writer and philosopher. The article consist of three parts an and short conclusion. In the first part I focus on Stempowski’s predilections for Eastern Europe, and I also explore Stempowski’s complicated, though clearly evident, relation with existentialism. It is in this context that I show both Stempowski’s close affinity with Shestov philosophy, and his evident antipathy to French existentialism. In the second part I attempt to answer the following question: why did Stempowski have such a strong aversion to Albert Camus’ work. In this part of my essay I briefly refer to a Serbian writer and dissident — Mihajlo Mihajlov. In the third part I explore Stempowski’s friendship with Shestov and I also sketch the ideological horizon they both shared. Moreover, I mention Shestov’s presentations at the philosophical conferences in Kraków and Berlin as well as his meeting with Edmund Husserl in Amsterdam. In the short conclusion to my article I suggest that Stempowski’s existentialism is an individual, original project even if his existentialism draws upon most of the major themes in philosophical treatises and literature of existentialism. His “existential project” is based on: 1. reason which rationally orders reality, 2. sympathy towards antirational and prophetic philosophy of Russian thinkers which he analyses from the positions of a professed atheist and 3. deeply-rooted humanistic values.

Poetry of the Chinese Diaspora: A Carnival Sense of the World

ABSTRACTThis essay examines poetry of the Chinese diaspora in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of literary carnival. At the heart of Bakhtin’s theory lies a vision of literature as comprising various forces in a process of constant shifts and movements that confront a canonical centre. Chinese diaspora poetry, long understood as a marginal literary production in North America, presents an interesting case for our examination of the epistemic preoccupations in the field of literary criticism. What we need in the study of Chinese diaspora poetry is a carnivalistic mode of thinking, or rather unthinking, which is not subject to aesthetic and ideological ‘assimilation from monologic positions.’ Starting from a marginal location, Chinese diaspora poetry has been undergoing a process in which it slowly legitimates the existence of its own styles against the limiting ideological horizons. Moreover, as the notion of carnival suggests, Chinese diaspora poetry itself is not pure or monolithic, but rather multivalent and polyglot; and for the same reason, a ‘carnival sense of the world,’ which accommodates heteroglossical and heterogeneous performances, inscribes a poetic affirmation of cultural difference that allows Chinese diaspora poets to achieve self-definition and self-validation.

Boosting nationalism with non‐nationalist ideology: A comparative biographical analysis of the Chinese communist revolutionaries

AbstractThis article conducts a comparative biographical analysis to explain why the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) revolutionaries used non‐nationalist Marxism to boost a nationalist movement. It argues that these people, based on their own observations of the precommunist Chinese nationalism, thought that China lacked structural conditions for making a solid nationalist movement such as cultural homogeneity, mass literacy, and a shared pride in modern history. They thus turned to seek a non‐national ideology that could still fulfil the functions of integrating leading elites, mobilizing the masses, and motivating the patriots themselves. Then, to explain why the CCP leaders particularly adopted Marxism, this article draws comparison with the Kuomintang (non‐communist nationalists) elites who advocated for more patience and insistence to develop regular nationalism. The comparison shows that the CCP's impatient jump stemmed from their disadvantaged backgrounds that had limited their ideological horizon: lower‐class origins, narrow overseas experiences, poor education, and weak attachment to traditional culture. To pre‐existing literature, this article makes three contributions: (1) provides a more detailed interpretation of the CCP's diagnosis of Chinese nationalism; (2) explains why the same structural dilemmas produced nationalist and non‐nationalist responses alike; and (3) draws a biographical database of the CCP and the Kuomintang.

How the Greek Radical Left and Extreme Right are Perceiving Democracy: A Research Attempt at a Social Epistemological Explanation

The outbreak of the unprecedented financial crisis in Greece and the ensuing fundamental change of the political landscape have brought to the fore serious problems in the functioning of the democratic order and institutions. Two political actors have played a major role in the challenging of democratic principles, namely the Radical Left Party SYRIZA and the extreme neo-fascist party Golden Dawn. The former has advanced from a small radical left party to the main opposition and - recently - the governing party, while the latter has become established, from a formerly old neo-nazi pariah party, as the third political power in parliament. This study tackles the long addressed problems of democratic order building in Greece. It is based on the working hypothesis that the malfunctioning of the democratic institutions in Greece is connected with the “pre-political” cognitive infrastructure of the Greek society, which originates in the past and is an integral element of the self-instituting political community “texture”. Our research method includes qualitative comprehensive interviews with party members and voters of SYRIZA and Golden Dawn. The main research objective is to reach an in-depth understanding of the interviewees, in the sense of uncovering their indigenous concepts concerning the democratic idea and practices, and to interpret the material in a permanent interaction between the interpretation frame and the facts concerning the research object. It will be asked, how the interviewees comprehend the key prerequisites for the construction of a democratic order, what is their socially-historically founded ideological horizon, how the links are formed between the ideas, images, models in mind and the incorporated collective memory with respect to the democratic principle. It will also be asked whether these problems with democratic understanding could be valid across party lines.

Il senso della croce. Forme liturgiche ed espressioni artistiche in Santa Giulia di Brescia

The essay analyzes the image of Giulia, the carthaginian martyr - crucified for not having renounced of her faith - along with the large and well-known cross of Desiderio, in the liturgical and devotional practices of the monastery of San Salvatore - Santa Giulia in Brescia. The precious relics, preserved in the crypt of the monastery founded by the Lombard king, Desiderio, and his wife, Ansa, and in particular the relics of Saint Julia become, before the beginning of the eleventh century, the ideological horizon for self-representation of the nuns that, around the cross, build their path of monastic asceticism where the cross of Desiderio becomes the natural corollary in connection with the passion of Christ in a very original, clever and erudite mix of art and faith.