(Nie)udany zamach na ludzkiego dyktatora? Zwrot ku rzeczom w perspektywie życzliwej, acz krytycznej (Uwagi ma marginesie pism Bjørna Olsena i Ewy Domańskiej)
An (Un)successful Assasination of the Human Dictator? The Turn Toward Things in a Benevolent yet Critical Perspective: Notes on the Margins of Bjørn Olsen and Ewa Domańska’s Writings

Summary/Abstract: The cognitive tendencies known as the turn toward things / materiality / nonanthropocentrichumanities are described as an opposition to constructivism andthe mediated, symbolic accounts of material culture. However, in the writings of EwaDomańska and Bjørn Olsen –considered the leading thinkers of the trend – we encounterboth theses that ontologize and essentialize things, which testifies to a retreat fromconstructivist epistemological tendencies, along with theses inspired by Bruno Latour’sthought, which capture things as active and identity-fluid elements of relations inthe dynamic network of reality, which is a modernizing continuation of constructivisttendencies. Non-anthropocentric humanities vaguely formulate their research object(in ontologizing and relational terms) and do not precisely define the semantics of thenotion of a thing and its referents. Thus, non-anthropocentric humanities do not fullyconstitute a research paradigm distinctive from constructivism. Instead, they define anemergent thinking style according to which the human subject is not so much removedfrom the discourse as it is apprehended in connection with the world of things, whichin an active and agency-related manner influences human identity and its activities.Simultaneously, the non-anthropocentric thinking style develops a new language fordescribing reality. Albeit intended to take shape outside the distinctions of Westernmetaphysics, the new language continuously falls into the traps of dualistic thinking. Thearticle critiques the theses of the non-anthropocentric humanities research project withthe goal of indicating the project’s cognitive value for modern humanities.

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