Eon, vol. 7, nr. 3 / 2026

Corina DOMNARI

Abstract: The understanding of the self evolved considerably during the 19th and 20th centuries. Initially, tradition equated the self with the "subject of consciousness," reflection, or the transcendental ego. However, phenomenology shifted emphasis from cognitive formation to how experience is expressed. Despite variations, sources and interpretations consistently highlight the self's complex and debated nature. Each definitional attempt often critiques earlier views, making the history of self-phenomenology a series of reinterpretations. Husserl initially distances himself from the modern ego concept but later revises his stance on transcendental subjectivity. Heidegger pushes this critique further by dismantling traditional ideas of ego, soul, person, and consciousness, replacing them with the analysis of Dasein, though his own views evolve later. Levinas advances this critique by grounding selfhood in ethical responsibility through relations with otherness. Conversely, Merleau-Ponty dismisses both transcendental and reflexive models, framing self-constitution in bodily experience. Recent discussions avoid seeking a single, clear-cut definition, instead favoring plural, relational, and dynamic models of ipseity.

Keywords: self, interiority, ipseity, body, consciousness, ontology, phenomenology.

BOUZEKRI ALI 

Title: "The Construction of Political Alterity in Media Discourse"
Abstract: This article analyzes verbal violence in a televised debate addressing Franco-Algerian relations. It shows that such debates, particularly in L'Heure des Pros, constitute spaces where diplomatic and memorial tensions are expressed through highly ideologized discourse.The study highlights discursive strategies aimed at constructing a negative image of Algeria, notably through devalorizing lexicalization and oriented argumentative processes. It demonstrates that this verbal violence constitutes a form of symbolic violence that sustains a persistent conflictuality between the two countries.Finally, the analysis reveals a systematic disqualification of Algeria embedded within a structured discursive ideology.

Keywords: verbal violence, televised debates, Franco-Algerian relations, ideological discourse, political alterity.

Sergiu BORTOȘ & Constantin C. LUPAȘCU

Abstract: This article examines the resurgence and instrumentalization of religious symbols, rhetoric, and narratives in contemporary Romanian politics, with particular attention to the 2024–2025 presidential campaign of Călin Georgescu. Situated within the broader global trends toward the sacralization of politics and the progressive erosion of boundaries between the sacred and the secular, it investigates how Christian motifs, esoteric imaginaries, and conspiracy-laden plots are deployed to legitimize new forms of charismatic leadership and construct alternative visions of collective identity. Drawing insights from phenomenology, theology, media theory, and post-communist political history, the study traces the transformation of political discourse into a hybrid space in which digital platforms facilitate the simulation of religious charisma, enabling the emergence of quasi-messianic figures such as Georgescu. The analysis concludes that these developments signal a process of political re-enchantment in Romania, in which the sacred is strategically mobilized as a resource for populist engagement in the context of an ongoing democratic crisis.

Keywords: sacred populism, re-enchantment, political crisis, Romanian politics, Călin Georgescu.

Bogdan Alexandru MAN

Title: "Onto-theology, rational structure, Greek heritage, critical horizons"
Abstract: This article examines onto-theology as the rational structure through which Western philosophy treats God as the ultimate ground, unifying principle, and final explanation of reality. Starting from the double definition, Kantian and Heideggerian, of the term, the article shows the main characteristics of onto-theology. This type of ontological structure rests on four principles of classical logic: non-contradiction, identity, excluded middle, and the principle of sufficient reason. The second part ends with Heidegger's critique directed at the logical foundation of onto-theology, in Die metaphysischen Anfangsgründe der Logik, showing that the laws of thought are not neutral axioms but already presuppose a certain understanding of being. The third part describes the evolution of onto-theology. The last part explores five domains that the critique of onto-theology reopens: analytic metaphysics of grounding, phenomenology and negative theology, Derridean linguistics, the philosophy of European culture, and political philosophy.

Keywords: onto-theology, metaphysics, Martin Heidegger, post-metaphysics, logics; post-foundation.

Diana CÂMPAN

Title: "Re-readings in the Context of a Forgotten Cultural Friendship: Alphonse Dupront ‒ Emil Cioran"
Abstract: This study aims to bring back to the attention of researchers a forgotten page of national, cultural, and literary history: the special intellectual friendship between the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran and the French historian Alphonse Dupront (1905–1990). Alphonse Dupront's personality had a fundamental impact on interwar Romania, Romanian-French relations, and collaboration between scholars and artists from the two countries. In 1932, the historian came to Romania as director of the French Institute of Advanced Studies, an institution founded in 1924 and, until then, headed by Paul Henry. Dupront remained at the helm of the Institute until 1940, subsequently becoming a professor at the Sorbonne, where, in 1956, he defended his doctoral dissertation, entitled Le Mythe de croisade. Through his direct involvement, Dupront provided intellectual support to Romanian scholars in obtaining important study and research grants in France. The best-known recipients of scholarships facilitated by Alphonse Dupront were Emil Cioran, Eugène Ionesco, and Mircea Eliade. We intend to bring back into discussion one of the least ideationally acknowledged moments in Emil Cioran's intellectual development: his departure from Romania and his first attempts to establish himself within an adopted culture, the French one. Far from being a perfect host, French culture generated profound anxieties and idiosyncrasies in Cioran, as well as ontological fears and striking states of self-invalidation and self-irony, all of which naturally migrated into his work.

Keywords: intellectual friendship, French culture, Alphonse Dupront, Emil Cioran, exile.

Adriana SĂVULESCU 

Title: "Deception as a literary structural principle in contemporary German-language literature"
Abstract: This paper examines the motif of deception in contemporary German-language literature and asks what functions it serves in the literary representation of reality, identity and processes of social communication. It proceeds from the premise that, in the novels selected, deception appears not merely as individual misconduct or a moral problem, but as a literary device that exposes fundamental mechanisms by which reality is constructed. The corpus comprises Timur Vermes' Er ist wieder da (2012), Daniel Kehlmann's F (2013), Mithu Sanyal's Identitti (2021) and Martina Hefter's Hey guten Morgen, wie geht es dir? (2024). The comparative analysis shows that the four novels unfold different forms of deception, ranging from media staging and institutional dissimulation to performative constructions of identity and linguistic and digital communication. Despite their differing aesthetic approaches, they share a concern with the conditions under which truth, authenticity and social reality are produced and negotiated. Theoretically, the paper draws on discourse analysis, narratology, and theories of intertextuality and performativity. The concepts of mimesis, alterity and the figure of the literary impostor are also used to situate the various forms of deception within cultural and literary studies. On this basis, the paper argues that deception can be understood not only as a narrative motif but also as a structuring principle of literary texts, one that reflects social power relations, constructions of identity and processes of meaning-making. The study shows that contemporary German-language literature portrays deception as a complex cultural phenomenon that increasingly unsettles the boundaries between truth and fiction, authenticity and performance, and individual and collective reality. In doing so, it opens up new perspectives on key social developments of the present and underscores the relevance of the motif for literary scholarship.

Keywords: deception, contemporary literature, construction of reality, identity, discourse, narratology.

Ionela-Izabela OLARIU

Title: "When Sound Becomes Desire: Phonetic Mistery and Semantic Games in Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov"
Abstract: The essay examines the interplay between phonetic and semantic dimensions in a fragment from Lolita, showing how sound actively contributes to meaning and desire. The name "Lolita" becomes a fetishized linguistic object, reflecting the narrator's obsession and the disconnection between language and reality. The essay also highlights the ambivalence of the aesthetic level, which both enchants and conceals a morally problematic content, emphasizing language as a powerful tool of manipulation and phantasy world-making.

Keywords: language, sound, allophone, meaning, obsession, Nabokov, Lolita.

Cipriana-Elena ÇAVAȘ

Title: "The Dynamics of the Norm in DOOM3: Reconfigurations in Nominal, Adjectival, and Verbal Inflection"
Abstract: This paper analyzes the structural shifts and evolutionary directions of the literary norm in contemporary Romanian, as reflected in the third edition of the Orthographic, Orthoepic, and Morphological Dictionary (DOOM3, 2021). The study focuses on the morphological reconfigurations recorded within nominal, adjectival, and verbal inflection, tracking how academic codification responds to the pressure of contemporary usage. The methodology is based on a comparative-descriptive approach, evaluating newly introduced forms in relation to previous editions. The research findings highlight three major trends: the reduction of double morphological variants to standardize paradigms, the officialization of phonetic alternations widely used in educated speech, and the systematic morphological integration of recent neological loanwords. The conclusions reveal that DOOM3 does not impose a radical reform, but rather validates a natural linguistic dynamic, consolidating the fragile balance between the trend toward language economy and the need to preserve the structural coherence of the Romanian grammatical system.

Keywords: DOOM3, linguistic dynamics, academic norm, morphological inflection, contemporary Romanian.

Claudia HOREANU

Title: "Recodifying the Voivode: Vlad Țepeș in Dracula Untold and Da Vinci's Demons"
Abstract: This article examines the recodification of the Vlad Țepeș/Dracula figure in two contemporary media products released between 2013 and 2015: the film Dracula Untold (2014) and the television serial Da Vinci's Demons (2013-2015). Through analysis of paratext, tragic heroism, iconography, East European space representation, cultural memory, and the politics of monstrosity, the study argues that while these productions rehabilitate the historical figure from vampire monster to tragic hero, this rehabilitation operates within asymmetrical power relations. The Eastern European subaltern subjectivity is not restored; rather, Eastern European alterity is repackaged to serve Western post-crisis anxieties about legitimate sovereignty. The article demonstrates that such recodification perpetuates rather than transcends Western cultural dominance in myth production and transnational circulation.

Keywords: Dracula Untold, Da Vinci's Demons, Vlad the Impaler, Western representation, East European otherness, media recodification.

Alexandra BARDAN

Abstract: A growing body of recent scholarship has examined hard-currency shops in Eastern Bloc countries as sources of constitutive tensions of late socialism, contributing to the emergence of a stratified, two-tier consumer society. However, "dollar shops" are mainly analyzed as forms of retail rather than as the endpoint of a broader administrative apparatus built to capture convertible currency. The present study advances the concept of "hard-currency bureaucracies" to examine a broader infrastructure, which also includes diaspora remittances. Drawing on a corpus of 15 academic articles discussing hard-currency shops and the mechanisms through which socialist states gathered foreign money, this study uses qualitative content analysis to configure a theoretical model of hard-currency bureaucracies. Results present the institutional hierarchy, the supply chain, consumer categories, types of goods and payment instruments, as well as the factors that have favored or, on the contrary, limited the development of the system. Such a model offers a heuristic point of reference rather than a description of any single case. By synthesizing dispersed, largely national literatures into one comparative framework, the research extends the understanding of the phenomenon and situates it within a transnational perspective.

Keywords: remittances; cross-border flows; shortage economy; operational models; parcels.

Miruna-Alexandra CIOCHINĂ & Eduard-Claudiu GROSS

Abstract: Advertising creativity has been profoundly reshaped by the migration of brand communication from television to digital platforms. Although this transformation is well documented internationally, systematic evidence on how creative strategies have adapted in emerging European markets such as Romania remains scarce, and it is unclear whether digital advertising follows a genuinely distinct creative logic or merely transfers televisual conventions to new channels. Here we show, through a content analysis of 40 commercials awarded at the Effie Romania and Internetics effectiveness competitions, coded on 17 narrative, strategic, visual, and distribution variables, that the two formats obey systematically different creative logics: television builds structured narratives, early brand identification, and aspirational, rationally balanced appeals, whereas digital advertising favors brand manifestos, empathic and intensely emotional appeals, deep adaptation to the host platform, and — counterintuitively — stronger local cultural anchoring. Conceptual originality, however, is equally high in both formats. These findings indicate creative complementarity rather than substitution between media, suggesting that advertising creativity now operates in a hybrid regime in which classical communication principles coexist with platform-first innovation.

Keywords: advertising creativity, content analysis, Romanian advertising, digital platforms, television advertising, viral content.