Biohumanistyka (rozpoznanie wstępne)
Biohumanities (Initial Findings). Abstract

Author(s): Ewa Domańska
Subject(s): Anthropology, Cultural history, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: biohumanities; integration of sciences; complementarism
Summary/Abstract: Since the late 1990s, there has been a transformation both of traditional understandings of the humanities as a field where humans as social beings are central and of the commonplace opposition of interpretative and experimental sciences. What is evident is a revival of discussions on the integration of the humanities and natural sciences. In this text, I offer an analysis of particular contexts in which the term “biohumanities” appears alongside an outline of selected cases where there has been a crossing of the biological and the social. My research here shows that the current “biological turn” in the humanities and social sciences is leading to fundamental transformation of understanding of the human, life, kinship, lineage and community, as well as of emotions, consciousness, and free will. In bringing about the integration of the humanities, social sciences, life sciences, and Earth sciences, biohumanities (alongside ecohumanities and geohumanities) often offers a way of transcending “cultural determinism”. The examples of complementary research presented here on the ontology of human remains and the environmental history of mass graves demonstrate that the monoculture of the humanities and social sciences often limits and indeed sometimes prevents the development of interesting research questions that would expand knowledge on particular phenomena. It can even leave certain questions out of bounds as it promotes hermeneutics as the fundamental mode of analysis.

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