Ewa Ziarek fully articulates a feminist aesthetics, focusing on the struggle for freedom in women's literary and political modernism and the devastating impact of racist violence and sexism. She examines the contradiction between women's transformative literary and political practices and the oppressive realities of racist violence and sexism, and she situates these tensions within the entrenched opposition between revolt and melancholia in studies of modernity and within the friction between material injuries and experimental aesthetic forms. Ziarek's political and aesthetic investigations (...) concern the exclusion and destruction of women in politics and literary production and the transformation of this oppression into the inaugural possibilities of writing and action. Her study is one of the first to combine an in-depth engagement with philosophical aesthetics, especially the work of Theodor W. Adorno, with women's literary modernism, particularly the writing of Virginia Woolf and Nella Larsen, along with feminist theories on the politics of race and gender. By bringing seemingly apolitical, gender-neutral debates about modernism's experimental forms together with an analysis of violence and destroyed materialities, Ziarek challenges both the anti-aesthetic subordination of modern literature to its political uses and the appreciation of art's emancipatory potential at the expense of feminist and anti-racist political struggles. (shrink)

The book _Metaphysics in Contemporary Physics_ offers various perspectives on the relation and mutual influence between modern physical theories and analytic metaphysics.

This book is the first presentation in Polish scientific literature of the views and concepts of social constructivists on the complex and varied problems of the philosophy of science with particular consideration of mathematics. It is based on numerous publications and comments of the founders and supporters of social constructivism.

Experimental emotion inductions provide the strongest causal evidence of the effects of emotions on psychological and physiological outcomes. In the present qualitative review, we evaluated five common experimental emotion induction techniques: visual stimuli, music, autobiographical recall, situational procedures, and imagery. For each technique, we discuss the extent to which they induce six basic emotions: anger, disgust, surprise, happiness, fear, and sadness. For each emotion, we discuss the relative influences of the induction methods on subjective emotional experience and physiological responses. Based (...) on the literature reviewed, we make emotion-specific recommendations for induction methods to use in experiments. (shrink)

What kind of challenge does sexual and racial difference pose for postmodern ethics? What is the relation between ethical obligation and feminist interpretations of embodiment, passion, and eros? How can we negotiate between ethical responsibility for the Other and democratic struggles against domination, injustice, and equality, on the one hand, and internal conflicts within the subject, on the other? We cannot address such questions, Ziarek argues, without putting into dialogue discourses that have hitherto been segregated: postmodern ethics, feminism, race theory, (...) and the idea of radical democracy. Addressing a constellation of diverse thinkers - including Emmanuel Levinas, Patricia Williams, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray - the author proposes a new conception of ethics, an ethics of dissensus that rethinks the relation between freedom and obligation in a double context of embodiment and antagonism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IconsEwa HarabaszArtistEwa Harabasz was born in Czestochowa, Poland. She currently lives and paints in New York City, where she is represented by The Luxe Gallery. Her paintings have been recently featured in several solo shows in Poland, most recently at Galeria BWA in Bielsko Biala, Le Guern in Warsaw, Galeria Miejska Arsenal in Poznan, and Galeria Wozownia in Torun. Her work was also featured in a solo exhibition at (...) the Luxe Gallery in New York. Her paintings have been included in a number of group shows including “Poza” at Real Art Ways in Hartford (see the catalog, “Poza: On the Polishness of Polish Contemporary Art”). Ewa Harabasz's new work will be presented in 2008 as part of the group show “Identity and Otherness in the Face of Anxiety” at the Socio-Political Contemporary Art Museum in Jerusalem, Israel.Harabasz has worked in church and religious art conservation in Italy and Poland, and grew up in Czestochowa, the seat of a Polish national religious shrine—a Byzantine icon called “Black Madonna.” She has been a visiting assistant professor at Cornell University since 2005.StatementThe images painted by Ewa Harabasz present themselves as ambiguous “icons”: it is unclear whether they refer to media representations of present-day war and destruction or to religious or spiritual iconography. Harabasz appropriates mass media images from the wars in Bosnia and Iraq, the Beslan tragedy, and London underground transportation terrorism by using photographic transfer methods combined with painting on wood in the style of inspirational religious art. Harabasz insists that the spectacle inherent in her images is a critical reflection on how the destruction and horror of human suffering in war and terrorism is often glamorized and dramatized, and turned into present-day pseudo-icons by the mass media to be consumed by the public as a “redeeming” experience. Writer Dora Apel cautions viewers to reflect “that these works are less analogous to the Byzantine icons of Harabasz's native Poland than the International Gothic paintings of the late Middle Ages, which demanded of religious art that it correlate with people's everyday experience. Paintings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries employed an extensive use of gold to create a sumptuous surface but combined it with a radical naturalism. The images ultimately pictured the workings of secular power, combined with religious figures. This came about at a time when religion focused increasingly on human and humane concerns. Similarly Harabasz uses a spiritual lens to focus on worldly experience, achieving, for modern sensibilities, the same elegance, coloristic splendor, narrative detail, and lyricism as those earlier medieval works.”Harabasz says that despite her obvious references to the Madonna images and other religious iconography, she wishes these images to be viewed as “false icons.” While saints and martyrs are immortalized via religious art, the survivors and victims whom media notoriously immortalize had no choice in their suffering. [End Page 81] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 82] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 83] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 84] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 85] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 86] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 87] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 88] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 89]Copyright © 2008 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

The introduction of Women and Gender Studies in Polish universities is intrinsically connected with the systemic transformation following 1989. This change was marked by the rejection of the communist past with its nominal sexual equality and acceptance of a conservative culture legally restricting women’s rights. Since the mid-nineties, Women and Gender Studies programs have been instituted in many state and private universities albeit on an auxiliary, extramural bases or as “specialization” within other degrees (e.g., sociology, or cultural studies). Since the (...) mid-2000s, gender studies in Poland include studies of masculinity, gender identity formation and queer theory in addition to the traditional women studies program. After Poland joined the EU, the introduction of European legal standards started to influence the progress in Poland’s gender politics towards greater recognition of minority rights. Gender Studies are in the foreground of these changes in teaching and training students and colleagues in gender issues seen as crucial for building a democratic inclusive society. (shrink)

It is argued that recent discussion of the principle of the identity of indiscernibles (PII) and quantum mechanics has lost sight of the broader philosophical motivation and significance of PII and that the `received view' of the status of PII in the light of quantum mechanics survives recent criticisms of it by Muller, Saunders, and Seevinck.

Cognitive Linguistics is an approach to language study based on three central premises: that the function of language is to convey meaning, that linguistic description must rely on constructs that are psychologically real, and that grammar emerges from usage. Over the last 40 years, this approach to studying language has made enormous strides in virtually every aspect of linguistic inquiry, achieving major insights as well as bringing about a conceptual unification of the language sciences. However, it has also faced problems, (...) which, I argue, must be addressed if the approach is to continue to flourish. Some of these are shared with generative linguistics, while some are peculiar to the cognitive approach. The former include excessive reliance on introspective evidence; paying only lip service to the Cognitive Commitment; too much focus on hypothesis formulation (and not enough on hypothesis testing); ignoring individual differences; and neglecting the social aspects of language. The latter include assuming that we can deduce mental representations from patterns of use and equating distribution with meaning. I conclude by sketching out how these pitfalls could be avoided. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 27 Heft: 4 Seiten: 479-491.

This paper examines early syntactic development from a usage-based perspective, using transcripts of the spontaneous speech of two Englishspeaking children recorded at relatively dense intervals at ages 2;0 and 3;0. We focus primarily on the children’s question constructions, in an effort to determine (i) what kinds of units they initially extract from the input (their size and degree of specificity / abstractness); (ii) what operations they must perform in order to construct novel utterances using these units; and (iii) how the (...) units and the operations change between the ages of two and three. In contrast to nativist theories of language development which suggest that children are working with abstract syntactic categories from an early point in development, we suggest that the data are better accounted for by the proposal that children begin with lexically specific phrases and gradually build up a repertoire of increasingly abstract constructions. (shrink)

This article shows that the question of “Historical Thinking and the Human” demands expanding the field of the philosophy of history. What I propose is to investigate the issue from two perspectives: firstly, by positioning it in the broader philosophical context, one that increasingly transcends the boundaries of the humanities to enter the realm of the life sciences; and secondly, by drawing on a wider range of analytical material than has usually been the case in classic works in the philosophy (...) of history. I will critically reflect upon history’s anthropocentric biases, highlighting the need to develop an alternative to history. My thinking is aligned, on the one hand, with notions of the agency of images that have emerged from art criticism and visual culture studies, and, on the other hand, with the idea of theriomorphism, which I explore in terms of new animism, new totemism and philosophical ethology. In my analysis of works by the South African artist Nandipha Mntambo, I argue that a future-oriented redefinition of the human should transcend the limited categories that have emerged within the framework of history understood as a Eurocentric approach to the past rooted in Greco-Judaic-Christian tradition. (shrink)

While many linguists view language as either a cognitive or a social phenomenon, it is clearly both: a language can live only in individual minds, but it is learned from examples of utterances produced by speakers engaged in communicative interaction. In other words, language is what (Keller 1994. On language change: The invisible hand in language. London: Taylor & Francis) calls a “phenomenon of the third kind”, emerging from the interaction of a micro-level and a macro-level. Such a dual perspective (...) helps us understand some otherwise puzzling phenomena, including “non-psychological” generalizations, or situations where a pattern which is arguably present in a language is not explicitly represented in most speakers’ minds. This paper discusses two very different examples of such generalizations, genitive marking on masculine nouns in Polish and some restrictions on questions with long-distance dependencies in English. It is argued that such situations are possible because speakers may represent “the same” knowledge at different levels of abstraction: while a few may have extracted an abstract generalization, others approximate their behaviour by relying on memorised exemplars or lexically specific patterns. Thus, a cognitively realistic usage-based construction grammar needs to distinguish between patterns in the usage of a particular speech community (a social phenomenon) and patterns in speakers’ minds (a cognitive phenomenon). (shrink)

I present the scope andcharacteristics of Marx''s interest in Russiaand review its evolution. Initially, Marx''sattitudes were marked by russophobia,pronounced anti-panslavism, assessments ofRussia as an outpost of European reaction andcounterrevolution, and even as the head of aconspiracy to block the world revolution. Withtime, however, Marx came to consider Russia asthe country in which the outbreak of theRevolution was most likely. In his research forsucessive volumes of Capital, he readRussian theoretical works by, among others, V.Bervi-Flerovskij and A. Koshelev. Marx''sattitudes to the anticipated (...) peasant revolutionin Russia remained ambivalent; to a certaindegree he feared its occurrence suspecting thatit could take on an `asiatic'' hue. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 25 Heft: 4 Seiten: 617-653.

This article deals with the material presence of the past and the recent call in the human sciences for a " things." This renewed interest in things signals a rejection of constructivism and textualism and the longing for what is "real," where "regaining" the object is conceived as a means for re-establishing contact with reality. In the context of this turn, we might wish to reconsider the status of relics of the past and their function in mediating relations between the (...) organic and the inorganic, between people and things, and among various kinds of things themselves for reconceptualizing the study of the past. I argue that the future will depend on whether and how various scholars interested in the past manage to modify their understanding of the material remnants of the past, that is, things as well as human, animal, and plant remains. In discussing this problem I will refer to Martin Heidegger's distinction between an object and a thing, to Bruno Latour's idea of the agency of things and object-oriented democracy, and to Don Ihde's material hermeneutics. To illustrate my argument I will focus on some examples of the ambivalent status of the disappeared person in Argentina, which resists the oppositional structure of present versus absent. In this context, the disappeared body is a paradigm of the past itself, which is both continuous with the present and discontinuous from it, which simultaneously is and is not. Since there are no adequate terms to analyze the "contradictory" or anomalous status of the present-absent dichotomy, I look for them outside the binary oppositions conventionally used to conceptualize the present-absent relationship in our thinking about the past. for this purpose I employ Algirdas Julien Greimas's semiotic square. (shrink)

L'intention de ce texte est de présenter l'opinion de Leszek Kołakowski sur la relations entre le discours de la rationalité et celui de la foi. Chacun de ces domaines a son propre discours qui lui est specifique et intraduisible. En general, la réflexion de Kołakowski tand à prouver que la présence d'un Absolu est necessaire. Ici, cet Absolu a le visage de Dieu. C'est Lui qui permet de reconnaître comme valables les principes moraux qui en dehors de la foi sont (...) dépourvus de fondement. Ces principes ont évolué à partir du discours de la foi et ont été adaptés à l'ordre de la vie quotidienne. (shrink)

The increase in suicidal behaviour among elderly people makes it necessary to take action in the field of broadly understood prevention. This includes helplines, which play an essential role in anti-suicidal measures. The aim of this study was to obtain information about the experience of Polish helpline workers in communicating with older people in suicidal crisis. The study was conducted among 106 helpline workers from various helpline centres across Poland. It proved that helpline workers in Poland have considerable experience in (...) communicating with elderly people in suicidal crisis, albeit the majority of respondents feel they need additional training in the area of broadly understood suicidology. (shrink)

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on the global economy, including the provision of health services, with medical facilities and patients cancelling or postponing medical appointments. An alternative to in-person appointments was through the available forms of telemedicine. Scientific reports around the world have suggested that the accessibility and quality of health services declined. The aim of this study was to investigate the accessibility and quality of health services in Poland and to verify whether there were differences (...) between men and women in this respect. The study was based on the authors’ own survey questionnaire filled in by 265 respondents, including 181 women, 82 men, and 2 persons without a defined gender. The study revealed that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the accessibility and quality of health services declined. Additionally, women were more likely to use general and specialist health services than men, but a comparison of changes in the assessment of accessibility and quality of services by gender revealed no differences in the assessment of accessibility and quality. (shrink)

The study aims to analyse the clinical proceedings in pregnant women diagnosed with brain death. Apart from the diagnostic premises and the patient’s rights, the ontological status of the foetus proves to be a severe problem. In reference to the principles of zeroth-order logic, the assumption of potential used by personalists is not a tautology.