Codzienność i polityka. Społeczny wymiar nowej duchowości w polskiej sztuce współczesnej
Everyday life and politics. Social dimension of new spirituality in Polish contemporary art

Summary/Abstract: Current interest in religion, religiosity and spirituality may be viewed as belonging to a post-secular turn, representatives of which are related to critical, social and philosophical, leftist theory. Literary studies of the Bible, traditional religious iconography and contemporary art have become sources of extra-ecclesiastical, feminist and queer theology. Post-humanist thought is an equally significant theoretical context or the so-called ‘new spirituality’ in Polish contemporary art as post-secularism. In her essential study, Bio-transfigurations. Art and Aesthetics of Posthumanism, Monika Bakke argues that it is impossible to speak today about a single posthumanism, however, for Rosi Braidotty, the leading spokesperson for posthumanism, post-secularism seems to be a notable point of reference. It is also note-worthy that numerous tenets of Braidotti’s posthumanism seem to correspond with extant conceptualisations of posthumanism in academic discourse: the struggle for emancipation of subjects (new spirituality speaks of transgression and transcending individual limitations); immanentism (sacrum accessible in earthly life); deconstruction of oppositions and a tendency towards holism, or even monism (in posthumanism, Spinoza-inspired new/vitalist materialism of Braidotti); emphasis on the affective dimension of cognitive processes (including, in social sciences); importance of experience; and connecting a critical with an affirmative approach.The work by Ola Kozioł, Honorata Martin and Magdalena Starska provides examples of individualised spirituality, focused on everyday life, with an interest in interpersonal and inter-species relationships. The political in these artforms is expressed in an examination of risks and direct formulation of postulates for social change (Kozioł), but its primary expression is a commitment to everyday life, opening an individual to a search for meanings beyond themselves, in group activities, in a dialogue with others, with nature and in inter-species relationships (Kozioł, Starska, Martin). A postuhmanist perspective points at new forms of spirituality, manifested in a very different realm than the religion of the future, proclaimed by the pioneer of sociology, Emil Durkheim, or ‘the cult of the individual’. It presupposes a communality and a relational construction of meanings; it has feminist aspects and sometimes reiterates counter-cultural postulates, resembling those put forward by the 1960s counter-culture.

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