Recenzja książki Cordelii Fine "Urojenia płciowe. Jak dzięki naszym umysłom, społeczeństwu i neuroseksizmowi powstają różnice między kobietami a mężczyznami", Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, Toruń 2018.

In this article, I wish to engage in reflecting on the limits of affirmative and vitalist potentials visible in new materialist research. An enthusiastic note is clearly heard from within the new materialist perspective, for example in the important work of Rosi Braidotti. I offer an interpretation of her ‘The Ethics of Becoming Imperceptible’ in hopes of reflecting on the limits of the affirmative approach. This interpretation is fuelled by more hesitant notes also heard within new materialist research, tones expressing (...) doubts, tracing the limits of materialist, vitalist, affirmative takes and offering perspectives that turn to ‘a matter that fails to come to life’, ‘unproductive and devoid of relations’. This turn – according to my reading – is an effort to respond to the need to recognise ‘our today’ in its complexity. To fully grasp the landscapes of ‘our today’, I offer a concept of bare death (in dialogue with bare life as coined by Giorgio Agamben and as used by Braidotti) as a concept that relates to instances where something has died but cannot enter into the ‘generative powers of a Life’. It is depicted with references to the nuclear and plastic landscapes of the Anthropocene. Relating to those landscapes, I make use of an art installation by Pinar Yoldas, The Ecosystem of Excess, as a kind of companion for thinking about becoming and the transformation of life and death in order to respond to the ambivalent landscapes of ‘our today’ and to understand how death matters beyond the human self. (shrink)

This essay considers the phenomenon of almanacs, encyclopedias, glossaries, lexicons, word books, vocabularies, companions, and toolboxes, which appears to be an outstanding feature of humanities today. By limiting her discussion to six specific examples of this genre, the author asks the following questions: Why is it that this method became so prolific? What are the objectives of almanacs, glossaries, and vocabularies? What do they do to thinking, writing, researching? What can they say about the moment we are in? And how (...) do they contribute to defining this moment? Those questions orient discussions around humanities today toward the ethico-political practice of thinking otherwise. (shrink)

W artykule przyglądam się twierdzeniu, jakoby feminizm był tęsknotą za wczesnym dzieciństwem, które jawi się jako utracony raj, miejsce utopijnie wyjęte poza ramy relacji panujących w kulturze patriarchalnej i opresji z nimi związanych, a więc także przestrzeń bezpieczeństwa, swobody, radości, spontaniczności i wszechmocy. Przedstawiam dwie możliwości rozumienia powyższej tezy. Po pierwsze, nawiązując do tradycji psychoanalitycznej, S. de Beauvoir oraz S. Bordo, kreślę perspektywę utopijnej tęsknoty za własnym dzieciństwem i neutralnością podmiotu poza relacjami władzy, które owocują pozornym buntem. Po drugie, odwołując (...) się do pojęcia „stawania się-dzieckiem”, zaczerpniętego z filozofii G. Deleuze’a i F. Guattariego, i patrząc nań z perspektywy feministycznej, pokazuję możliwość rozumienia figury dziecka jako enfant terrible feminizmu, cennego z punktu widzenia feminizmu przyszłości. (shrink)

In the article the author reflects on the meaning of politics in a newmaterialist framework. She concentrates predominantly on two political dimentions – space and time. With reference to that, the author develops the concept of politics of squatting. Its spatial aspect is investigated along the lines of the notion of heterotopia, coined by Michel Foucault, and its temporal aspect is analyzed through the concept of heterochrony and Darwinian evolution as interpreted by Elizabeth Grosz. The concept of politics of squatting (...) is then juxtaposed with nomadism. Finally, the author provides a case study by elaborating on the anti-gender campaign that began in 2012-2013 in Poland from the perspective of politics of squatting. (shrink)