Author: techsocjal

Paweł Dybel
(Polish Academy of Sciences)

Abstract:
In my presentation, I will raise the question of the status of the phenomenon of cruelty in art considered in the context of the transformations that occurred in modernity in terms of man’s relationship to natural being. The effect of these transformations was a manipulative and domineering attitude of man towards this being. In it, it was – according to Heidegger – reduced to the role of a “storehouse” (Ge-stell), that man takes upon himself in an effort to exploit it to the maximum for himself. I call this attitude ontological cruelty. At the same time, I ask whether the transformations that have taken place in contemporary art under the influence of avant-garde theories correspond with these transformations? I try to demonstrate that this kind of analogy does not occur, because the representations of artworks are characterized by a completely different attitude to being since they are based on its “affirmation”, not exploitation. However, the space of creative freedom opened by the avant-garde in relation to the material of the work of art prompts to raise a different kind of questions about the status of cruelty in art. I ask these question by considering the surreal world of female doll bodies in the work of German artist Hans Bellmer. This is a remarkable example, because in this work female bodies of dolls created by him undergo profound deformations in his artwork. They are mutilated in various ways, metal and wooden prostheses are attached to them, and so on. The question that arises is: what is the actual status and meaning of these deformations? What is the peculiar kind of aesthetic “cruelty” behind them?

Bio:
Paweł Dybel – Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology PAN Warsaw. Philosopher, literary critics, historian. Main areas of interest: modern philosophy (hermeneutics, phenomenology, poststructuralism), psychoanalytic theories, theory of literature and art, history of Polish psychoanalysis. Scholarships: Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, The Kosciuszko Foundation, Thyssen Stiftung, DAAD, DFG, The British Academy, The Mellon Foundation a.o. Visiting Professor at: University of Bremen (1993, 1995); Humboldt University Berlin (1996); University Siegen (1997); University Würzburg (2004, University at Buffalo Institute of Sciences of Man, Vienna a.o. From 2020 member of Scientific Council at “Sigmund Freud Institute” in Frankfurt am Main. Books (selection): Painting with a Body. The Philosophy of Painting by Merleau-Ponty, Gdańsk 2012 (Pol.), The Faces of Hermeneutics, Universitas, Krakow 2012 (Pol.), Gadamers Thought on Art., Akademia Sztuk Pięknych, Gdańsk 2014) (Pol.); Psychoanalytische Brocken. Philosophische Essays, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2016 (Ger.), Psychoanalysis –the Promised Land? The History of Psychoanalysis in Poland (1900 – 1918) Vol. 1 Peter Lang Verlag Berlin – New York – Oxford 2020 (Eng.), Subversive Lectures (I.Kant, H-G.Gadamer J.Derrida, J.Lacan a.o.) Universitas Krakow 2022. Grants: 2013-2014 co-director of grant „Psychoanalyse und Hermeneutik” (together with prof. Hermann Faller, prof. Hermann Lang, prof. Heinz Weiss) cooperation between Polska Akademia Nauk and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. 2016-2019 co-director of Polish – German grant (together with Ewa Kobylinska-Dehe) „Geschichte der Psychoanalyse in Polen im Kontext des deutsch-polnisch-jüdischen Kulturdreiecks.” Financed within the frames of „Institutionspartnerschaft” Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. Cooperation between Pedagogical University in Kraków and International Psychoanalytic University in Berlin.

 

Adam Lipszyc
(Polish Academy of Sciences)

Abstract:
The paper focuses on the exceptional analysis of cruelty, submission and desire – as well as the paradoxes of identity and identification – in Xavier Dolan’s 2013 psycho-thriller Tom at the Farm based on the play by Michel Marc Bouchard. Taking Freud’s, Lacan’s, Deleuze’s and Chasseguet-Smirgel’s insights into the nature of masochism as my frame of reference, I will try to show Dolan’s radical and highly original meditation on the role of cruelty in our desperate search for our identity and for the object of our desire. I will pay particular attention to the breathtaking cinematography of the film, including the characteristic shots of the backs of the protagonists heads, which I will read in the light of the rival philosophies of the face offered by Levinas and Deleuze.

Bio:
Adam Lipszyc is the head of the Center for Psychoanalytic Thought based in the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He teaches in the Graduate School for Social Research and at the Franz Kafka University of Muri. In his work, he focuses on the philosophical implications of psychoanalysis, philosophy of literature, as well as on the 20th century Jewish thought. Most recently, he published (in Polish) a volume of essays on literature and psychoanalysis (Paper Nose of Literature, 2024). With Agata Bielińska, he co-edited a volume Space in Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalysis in Space (Routledge, 2024). He is the editor in chief of the academic journal „wunderBlock: Psychoanaliza i Filozofia” (wunderBlock: Psychoanalysis and Philosophy).

 

Bettina Szabados
(HUN-REN Research Centre for Humanities in Budapest)

Abstract:
In 1918/1919 was a turning point in the history of Hungary. The long years of the Great War was followed by the short-lived Aster Revolution and by the equally ephemeral Hungarian Soviet Republic. The war and these revolutionary states claimed many lives, and demanded even self-sacrifice, which awakened the need for a new ethical perspective.
Can the killing of one person, or even hundreds of people, be morally justified if it is done for the “greater good”? And what does the “greater good” even mean? Is it merely a utopia, or is it a reality that can be achieved?
These were the main questions of interest for a circle of thinkers. György Lukács and his contemporaries not only asked these questions, but they also tried to live according to them. Lukács’s main task was to “create” an ethic that involved committing sin. This ethic, which I call the ethic of sacrifice, is based on the idea that changes in reality can only be achieved if we are even capable of killing for it. However, if someone commits to this idea and lives by the rules of this ethic, they may be capable of the most inhuman cruelty, because there can be no boundary when the “greater good” is at stake. Lukács’s answer to this, in his famous article Tactics and Ethics, was that only sacrifice can be a measure: sacrifice reveals whether an act is motivated by cruelty or by love for humanity. However, those who commit to this ethic also sacrifice their own moral purity.
The main task of this case study is to try to understand how the ethic of sacrifice changed in the process of its application, or whether we can still speak of an ethic in the context of cruelty. To explore this, I will examine two cases: the dictatorship of Stalin and the terrorist group, the Red Army Faction.

Bio:
Bettina Szabados is a PhD student in Philosophy at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Her research interests include Hungarian and German history of philosophy of the 19th and 20th century, the history of ideas of the 19th and 20th century and the philosophy of Georg (György) Lukács.

 

Ivan Dimitrijević
(University of Warsaw)

Abstract:
In Horrorisms Adriana Cavarero had implicitly pointed at the fact that the victim of cruelty is characterized by defenselessness (inermità, literally: “being without arms”). The defenseless status of a person can be either situational (in the event of being at mercy of someone) or ontological, as in the case of an infant. Given that Cavarero argues that human being is structurally dependent and relational and, as such, defenseless by nature, this means that there are no boundaries to cruelty to be found except for the force of the political power (law, sovereignty, state apparatus). In this paper I aim to explore the limits to cruelty by taking into account its opposites: pity and sympathy. By considering the pre-institutional praxis of the “Homeric society”, I will argue that pity posits a potential limit to cruelty even when legitimate power commanding compassion and refrainment from excessive violence is missing. On the other hand, the modern concept of cruelty is semantically and logically linked to the concept of sympathy. I will argue that modern cruelty and its opposite are potentially limitless, given that one can act cruelly in order to empower or impose sympathy among human beings: to be cruel towards a cruel person equals to showing sympathy towards mankind, to being just. The sympathy, developed by Scotch moralists in order to counter Hobbes’s possessive individualism, operates as a moral force of socialization and makes the cruelty appear uneconomic. A cruel deed can be defined as an action without profit. Here lies the reason why some anti-capitalist thinkers have tried to reevaluate cruelty – as in the case of Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty in which cruelty is a “Nietzschean” force that shatters false realities.

Bio:
Ivan Dimitrijevic teaches philosophy at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw. His research interests include political philosophy, philosophy of praxis, and conceptual history. His last works have been devoted to the conceptual history of political and practical aspects of concepts of madness, work and movement: Critique and Care: Madness Before and After Basaglia (2022, in Italian), Dispute on Work (2022, in Polish) and To Go and to Arrive at the Same Time: Four Essays in the Critique of Therapeutic Politics (2023, in Polish).

 

Nikolai Kostin
(Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow)

Abstract:
The close relationship between violence and technology is a popular theme in many contemporary discourses, whether philosophical, sociological or political science. Violence begets violence, but it is often technology that acts as a tool of brutality. In this article, we will rely on an understanding of technology as ‘techne’, i.e. as a philosophical category, separating the concepts of ‘technicality’ and ‘technology’ from it.
When we speak of ‘techne’, we emphasise its anthropological character – on the one hand, it is something separate from man, outside of him, something that mediates the dialogue between the individual and the world, something created by man. On the other hand, it is something that is deeply immersed in man, is an important part of him, has a special closeness to man and is therefore hidden from him. How, then, are violence and technology related to the individual?
To answer this question, we can synthesise the ideas of two very different thinkers, Lev Karsawin (a 20th century Russian and Lithuanian philosopher) and Yuk Hui (a contemporary Hong Kong philosopher and technology theorist). Despite their seemingly vast difference, one can imagine a synthesis of their concepts: ‘Karsawin’s ‘pulsating personality’ and Hui’s ‘techne as cosmotechnics’. The dynamic understanding of personal structure (Karsawin) allows us to understand the locality and regionality of techne (Hui). Moreover, thanks to the locality and anthropological character of ‘techne’, we can realise that it is directly related to the philosophy of personhood.
How to think of the Other? – To stop thinking of him through correlation and leave him to his anonymous entity. And it is through knowledge and technology that violence occurs, what Karsawin calls the ‘extinction of thinking’ (brutalism). How does the ‘extinction of thinking’ relate to an understanding of ‘techne’? – To this question, the paper assumes a combination of the above two concepts as a preliminary answer.

Bio:
Nikolai Kostin is a doctoral student at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland (Faculty of Philosophy). Doctoral thesis focus on the philosophical ideas of Knorozov, a well-known Maya language researcher, anthropologist, historian, linguist and semiotician. While the figure of Knorozov is not well-known in the field of philosophy, the main focus of the thesis is to identify, systematise and investigate the context of the scholar’s theoretical concepts.
His academic interests include Russian philosophy of the late period (20th century) – especially understudied researchers. Philosophical anthropology, philosophy of language, theory of the collective.

 

Michał Paweł Markowski
(University of Illinois Chicago)

Abstract:
Cruelty, in the broadest sense, means to draw existential profit from inducing the mental and physical suffering of another being. It is anchored in the urge to compensate for the lack of individual or communal satisfaction. The more of this existential deficit in everyday life, the higher the chances for cruelty to creep into the life of an individual or a group. Taking as an example one of the founding texts of Polish Modernity, the author shows how cruelty becomes an efficient tool for reintroducing cohesion in a troubled community. Cruelty, along with scapegoating, hatred, and shaming, is not an unexpected deviation, a disposable excess, or an exception from a more sublime norm but a fundamental gesture of a community that wants to overcome persisting existential traumas. This community has no other remedy for its gripping experience than the violent and—simultaneously—relieving incapacitation of others, who become directly responsible for the existential misery of perpetrators. If this community happens to be, as in the case analyzed, Christian, the obvious consequence would be forcing a hypothesis about the cruel (not perverse) core of Christianity and—pushing the logic of the argument closer to our historical condition—about the cruel foundations of Polish Modern culture.

Bio:
Michał Paweł Markowski (1962), The Stefan and Lucy Hejna Family Chair in Polish Language and Literature at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Head of the Department of Polish, Russian, and Lithuanian Studies at UIC. He is also a tenured Research Professor at Jagiellonian University, where he created in 2007 the Centre for the Advanced Studies in the Humanities at Jagiellonian, where he served as the first Director until he moved to Chicago in 2010. Since 2008 he has directed The International Literary Joseph Conrad Festival in Kraków. Now works as an expert for The European Research Council in Brussels. Author and editor of more than thirty books on literature and philosophy and several hundreds of articles and essays translated subsequently into English, French, German, Belarussian, Czech, Slovakian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Swedish, Slovenian, Hungarian, and Romanian. The most important monographs include The Inscription Effect: Jacques Derrida and Literature (1997), Nietzsche: Philosophy of Interpretation (1997), Desire for Presence: Philosophies of Representation from Plato to Descartes (1999), Identity and Interpretation (2003), Black Waters: Gombrowicz, World, Literature (2004), Theories of Literature in the 20th Century (2 volumes; 2006), Polish Modern Literature (2007), Universal Dissolution: Schulz, Existence, Literature (2012). His The Politics of Sensitivity: Introduction to the Humanities (2013) opened a trilogy on social and political aspects of humanities, which has been complemented by Wars of Modern Tribes (2019) and Poland, Bliss, and University. An Educational Story (2021). His Collected Texts (1988-2023), gathering all papers and essays not included in authorial books, will be published in 2023-2024 in three volumes (t. 1: Interpretation; t.2: Politics; t. 3: Representation). His unpublished Polish essays on Polish literature will be edited in a volume tentatively titled The Home and the World. The Dialectical Adventures of Polish Modern Literature. He translated works by Proust, Barthes, Blanchot, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze, Kristeva, Rorty, and Perec. He edited the writings of Friedrich Schlegel, Marcel Proust, Roland Barthes, and Julia Kristeva. He penned six collections of essays: Anatomy of Curiosity (1999), Excess: Essays on Writing and Reading (2002), Desire and Idolatry (2004), Life Measured by Literature (2007), Sun, Possibility, and Joy (2010), and The Dribble (2015). Co-editor of two prestigious book series in Polish: Hermeneia (Jagiellonian Publishing House) and Horizons of Modernity (Universitas, over 100 volumes published). His book, Day on Earth: Travelling Prose (2014), combines fiction, travel essays, and photography. An exhibition of his photographs, Line and Land, took place in Chicago in 2015. He penned three travel photo essays (Andalusia, America, India) and has had a robust media presence for over three decades.

 

Papers and panels are invited for the interdisciplinary conference, “Cruelty and Brutalism Today”, which will take place in Warsaw from 4-5 November 2024. The conference is organized by the Faculty of “Artes Liberales ” at the University of Warsaw (Poland) and is part of the “Technology and Socialization” project.

Cruelty has many faces. Indeed, the cruelty of war is incomparable to the silent cruelty taking place in the privacy of our homes, and this is different from the cruelty of “cold institutions” that often use the letter of the law. However, what is disturbing is the scale of cruelty and the laughter of torturers acting not only without a sense of guilt but also with a dubious justification for the “greater necessity” of using violence.

In his book Coldness and Cruelty, Gilles Deleuze asks questions about contemporary forms of sadism and masochism. We want to reflect on the forms of the “sadistic Superego” utterly devoted to cruelty, but also the forms of the “masochistic Ego” ready for “affective contact”. The affective constellation of our world gives the impression that we are already operating outside Hegel’s dialectic of recognition, which is the dialectic of recognizing the desire of the Other. Contemporary politics has become devoid of mediation, armed with naked violence that can only escalate.

Andrew Culp claims that our era is not the “age of sad passions but of the masochistic contract that is sealed by fusing the cruel thrill of exploiting others with the self-destructive delights of being oppressed.” This masochistic contract is accompanied by widespread de-medialization, which – as it seems – ends the era of representation. Everyone wants to be present today and present their opinion without the help of a mediator. The representation gives way before the presentation. Does this state of affairs always end with a shitstorm of media that allows immediate release and which becomes – as Byung-Chul Han writes – a kind of “communication reflux” that destroys not only the order of power but also the very possibility of expressing respect. The screen is no longer a window to the world or even a frame but an information board on which data, images, inscriptions and texts move. Today, the screen is a frame for affectation and a seat of indifference. This is a severe problem.

During the conference, we will try to diagnose the sources and forms of atrocities in a world increasingly devoid of intimacy and sensitivity and increasingly filled with brutalism. As Achille Mbembe rightly argues, Brutalism today “is not an architectural style or a type of leading aesthetics, but the very essence of politics”. We argue that this brutalism goes deeper, i.e., the principles of operation of our affects, the libidinal economy. The tools of brutalism are cold (calculated) and hot (expressive) cruelty. Deleuze, citing Roberto Rossellini, concludes that art today is either lament or cruelty. Rossellini himself suggested that cruelty always consists of the violation of someone’s personality, forcing someone to be entirely and unreasonably exposed. Isn’t this the type of total exposure we see daily on our computer screens? We may live in an era of chaos, but does it justify the appeal to “pure factuality” and the policy of “final resorts”, in which the militarization of the police and the politicization of the army have turned our lives into a state of constant occupation?

Presentations are expected to be between 20 and 30 minutes. Please send abstracts of up to 300 words, attached in a Word document, with a short bio to technologyandsocialization@gmail.com by the 31st of August, 2024. Should you need any further information, do not hesitate to contact us at the same e-mail address. All information about the conference and the “Technology and Socialization” project can be found here. We are looking forward to your participation and to hosting you in Warsaw.

 

Organizing Committee :
Professor Szymon Wróbel
Dr Krzysztof Skonieczny
Dr Katarzyna Szafranowska
Mgr Adam Cichoń

Szymon Wróbel
(University of Warsaw, Polish Academy of Sciences)

Abstract:
Deleuze rightly discerns at least three ways of reading Spinoza’s central concept of conatus. First, conatus can be understood as a commitment to persevere in existing, sustaining life and circularity of being. This is a mechanical definition of conatus, which makes of it a tool of the death drive. From Hobbes to Freud, both philosophy of life and political philosophy were philosophies of self-preservation, i.e. sustaining life. Yet, paradoxically, these philosophies were becoming philosophies of death. In a second determination, the conatus is a pseudo-dialectic force opposing any disturbances and threats, and as such it negates, defends, avoids, wanders, cheats, and deceits. Hegel in his dialectic of master and servant gives perhaps the first outlook of this strange logic of deception and deferring death through deception, whereby life gets dispersed in a multitude of petty deaths and their simulations. Finally, in a third determination, the conatus is a dynamic force aimed at enhancing the power of understanding; as such it involves the freedom to react and create compositions (collectives). In this final determination conatus stands for reason, here understood as a power to select and organize. In my speech I will try to falsify Deleuze’s hypothesis according to which there is the possibility of deriving all three formulas of conatus from one affirmative concept of life. The key to this verification will be Spinoza’s thesis that affects-affections (affectus) are nothing other than its pseudo-figurations that arise when conatus is determined to do something in response to external stimulation (affectio) which is accidental to the body.

Szymon Wróbel is a professor of philosophy at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales” of the University of Warsaw and at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is the author of numerous books and articles scattered in various scientific journals. His latest book in Polish, is Philosopher and Territory. The Politics of Ideas in the Thoughts of Leszek Kołakowski, Bronisław Baczko, Krzysztof Pomian and Marek J. Siemek, was published by the IFiS PAN Institute in 2016. Currently he leads the experimental Laboratory of Techno-Humanities at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales.”

Aditi Vashistha
(University of Delhi)

Abstract:
This paper explores love stories in the post digital age through a comparative study of love story of two different times, while focusing on the separation of selves. First is “Meghadutam” by Kalidasa in 375CE. Second is an episode “Striking Vipers” from dystopic TV series “Black Mirror”. While former is only a separation of space, the latter, because of digital communication, is a separation in temporality. Dystopic literature today trangresses1 the limitation of space that existed in literature earlier. Separation in love, and the desire to be with the lover are two intimate parts of a love story. Desire, while forming itself through phantasm creates its own life-world. Separation and the desire to be with the lover creates memories. In Kalidasa’s Meghdutam, space works as a boundary that defines separation. It is limit of movement and communication. Meghadutam is a love poem where Yaksha4 is on a lonely mountain peak, desperate to be with his beloved, he asks the cloud to deliver a message to her in the Himalayan city of Alaka. It describes mountains, trees, oceans, and rivers in the space between them. Only the territorial distance is significant, and not the time because Yaksha is completely absorbed in her memory. Striking Vipers is a story of two individuals who met online where they developed a virtual sexual relationship, and their virtual characters developed emotional intimacy. One of them was single while the other had a married life which started getting affected by this online relationship. Here, separation can be understood not in the terms of space but in the terms of time. The post-digital age has opened up a new dimension of existence. Where self exists at multiple levels simultaneously. This renews the question of existence. The self that exists at multiple levels is living multiple lives also.

Aditi Vashistha is an M.Phil student in Department of Political Science, University of Delhi. Her work is around the interactions of literature and Political Science. Her specialisation is in Indian regional literature. 

Tom Tyler
(University of Leeds)

Abstract:
Videogames offer diverse affective experiences, from the pain that comes with getting stuck or failing altogether to the pleasures of progression and ultimate success.  The vicissitudes of play are a vital part of the videogame experience: the game that is consistently too easy soon becomes boring, whilst the game that is too hard inevitably becomes frustrating.  One way in which designers have attempted to sustain an appropriate degree of challenge for the diverse players who would engage with their game, is to provide a means of adjusting the difficulty of the tasks and trials it presents. In this presentation, I want to reflect on the figure of the videogame player, particularly the ordinary or typical player, whom we might call the “everyplayer.”  I will take as a starting point the influential first-person shooter Half-Life 2 (Valve Corporation, 2004), set in a dystopian future populated by nightmarish monsters and ruled over by a technologically advanced alien power.  I will consider Gordon Freeman, a member of the human resistance and so-called everyman hero of the game, with whom players are invited to identify.  I will look, at the same time, at the three difficulty settings that players are offered by the game: Easy, Normal and Hard.  Drawing on the work of games scholar Espen Aarseth, I will examine the ways in which any given videogame sets expectations of its players, and indeed inescapably implies a particular kind of player who is eligible to take part.  We will find that the myth of the ordinary or typical player is a pernicious illusion and, further, that the player of videogames need not even be human.

Tom Tyler is a Lecturer in Digital Culture at the University of Leeds, UK.  He has published widely on animals and anthropocentrism within the history of ideas, critical theory, and popular culture.  He is the author of CIFERAE: A Bestiary in Five Fingers (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), co-editor of Animal Encounters (Leiden: Brill, 2009), and editor of Animal Beings (Parallax #38, 12.1, 2006).