Author: techsocjal

Ivan Dimitrijevic
(Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw)

Abstract:
If we can agree with Giorgio Agamben that the essence of the European thought is to be found in its permanent rethinking its own origins, than in order to comprehend the transformations of work in the post-digital age, we firstly have to try to grasp the original semantics of the concept of work. The work was initially conceptualized by Plato and Aristotle: the ergon argument is discussed both in Republic I and Nicomachean Ethics I. The ergon represents the missing link between dynamis and energeia (in Aristotle) and nature and politics (in Plato): indeed it was considered by contraposing the proper work of man against the work of the technician, of the parts of the body, and of other living beings. Agamben argues that on our definition of work it depends how do we think life, nature, politics, and happiness and what tasks do we assign to the living beings, the body, and the city. All of these things cannot be thought, acquired, practiced, without referring them to the work. In order to get rid of the teleological structure of Western metaphysics and its bio-political apparatuses, which reduces the bios, the body, and social activities to functions of metaphysical operations of the soul, Agamben elaborates the idea of inoperativness (inoperosità), that is, of a work (opera) that does not aim at its own completion: in other words, a work that produces pure potentiality of working and living and that consequently generates freedom from metaphysics. Such an important theoretical contribution will be examined by comparing Agamben’s semantics of inoperativness and the ethical dimension of the ancient concept of ergon.

Ivan Dimitrijević studied philosophy at the University of Trieste. He holds the PhD in cultural studies from the University of Warsaw and teaches at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales”. He has published several articles and essays in political philosophy and ethics, mainly by applying the Begriffsgeschichte methodology, and is the author of La contraffazione della politica: la paura della fine, la tutela del bios e il potere della socializzazione (Saonara: il prato, 2016) and co-author of Come la teoria finì per diventare realtà: Sulla politica come geometria della socializzazione (Udine-Milano: Mimesis, 2014, with P. Orłowska). He has edited and translated into English Alessandro Biral’s Plato and the Political Knowledge (Saonara: il prato, 2016).

Heiko Feldner
(Centre for Ideology Critique and Žižek Studies, Cardiff University)

Abstract:
The systemic illiteracy of the capital valorisation economy towards its social conditions of existence manifests and perpetuates itself most effectively in the shape of three powerful mythologies: first, the historical grand narrative of ‘1989’, which interprets the unceremonious demise of communism in Europe as a triumph of free market economics and liberal democracy; second, the economic tale of ‘creative destruction’ according to which only a new science and technology offensive could redeem us from the global economic crisis we have entered in 2008; and, third, the libertarian ‘end of work society’ discourse, which renders the decomposition of contemporary work society as a blueprint for a post-capitalist world beyond work. Mutually reinforcing in their denial of the historical finitude of capitalism as a mode of production and way of life, these mythologies shield us from the traumatic realisation of the depth of the eco-economic catastrophe that is unfolding in uncanny slow motion before our eyes. Against this background, my paper looks at the ‘digital revolution’ as a paradigm of economic development, prosperity and growth. How does it relate to the above mythologies? What part, if any, did it play in the history that connects 1989 with 2008? Can it contribute to alternative forms of social synthesis beyond the valorisation of human labour, collaborative forms that may overcome the crisis of modern work society without sliding inadvertently into the abyss of de-civilisation, as political philosopher Hannah Arendt predicted we most probably would. This paper will explore these and other questions through the lens of Marx’ critique of the value-form of social mediation as the historical a priori of capitalist work societies – an unconscious social matrix which pre-configures and encodes the modern world as we know it.

Heiko Feldner is co-director of the Centre for Ideology Critique and Žižek Studies at Cardiff University, UK, and general editor of Bloomsbury’s Writing History series on modern historiography and historical theory. While his recent work focused on the 2008 global economic crisis, he is currently writing a future history of capitalism, entitled The Meaning of 1989.

Michaela Fišerová
(Department of Media studies, Metropolitan University, Prague; Department of Electronic Culture a Semiotics, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague)

Abstract:
In my paper, I focus on digital photographs, which are massively shared on contemporary social networks. I propose to grasp the instantly taken and shared photos (snap-shots) as a melancholic technology, which generates visual remains of everyday events. According to my hypothesis, the practice of sharing of vital fragments is supposed to keep the participating users of social networks socially “alive” – more fragments of their lives they share on their “profiles”, more they ask for attention and social acceptance of their lives. The proposed reflection issues from rhetorical understanding of photography as visual metonymy, but it is also strongly inspired by Derridian reflections on recording technologies as on supplementary remains of past events, which are supposed to satisfy the metaphysical desire to grasp individual events and make them socially “present”.

Michaela Fišerová, Ph.D. is a Czech philosopher. She works mostly in the fields of visual studies and contemporary French philosophy, particularly deconstruction and poststructuralism. Her ongoing research concerns rhetorical and social aspects of the problematics of visuality and image, especially photography and signature. She is the author of monographs Partager le visible. Repenser Foucault (Paris: L’Harmattan 2013), Image and Power. Interviews with French Thinkers (Prague: Karolinum 2015) and Deconstructing Signature. Jacques Derrida and Repeating of the Unrepeatable (Prague: Togga 2016). She also publishes in philosophical journals Filozofia (Bratislava, Slovakia) and Philosophy Today (Chicago, USA).

Paweł Frelik
(American Studies Center, University of Warsaw)

Abstract:
The arrival of digital technologies of production has dramatically changed the ways in which audiences in general and fandoms in particular engage cultural production. The conceptions of immaterial labor and affective labor have been especially useful in describing the forms of fan activity, while terms such as prosumption and “playbor” have been deployed in analyses of specific industries and medial forms. Given the multiplicity and ubiquity of forms in which fans perform labor that directly benefits producers, it seems impossible to engage with cultural products without performing immaterial labor, a diagnosis which is depressing in its inevitability of involuntary exploitation. In my presentation, I would like to complicate this seemingly dystopian scenario by focusing on several fan practices which are perceived as outright illegal or whose legality is questionable. Most of these are lumped under the common rubric of media piracy. However, particularly with respect to video games, films, and music (but also, to a lesser extent, magazines, books, and television shows), some of these initiatives cannot be reduced to the activity of illegal file-sharing. Major among them are underground archiving projects whose goal is to catalog, organize, annotate, and preserve bodies of cultural texts in various media. Curated by private online communities and invite-only torrent trackers, such initiatives can be analyzed from several perspectives. In the context of work/labor discussions, they demonstrate the limitations of thinking of immaterial labor as inherently exploitative but also highlight the insufficiency of current copyright laws and official archival projects.

Paweł Frelik is Associate Professor and the Leader of Speculative Texts and Media Research Group at the American Studies Center, University of Warsaw. His teaching and research interests include science fiction, video games, fantastic visualities, digital media, and transmedia storytelling. He has published widely in these fields, serves on the boards of Science Fiction Studies, Extrapolation, and Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, and is the co-editor of the New Dimensions in Science Fiction book series at the University of Wales Press. In 2017, he was the first non-Anglophone recipient of the Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service presented by the Science Fiction Research Association for outstanding service activities.

Jakub Gużyński, Krzysztof Tarkowski
(Institute of Philosophy, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń)

Abstract:
In Inventing the Future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams put forward a leftist vision for society in a post-work world. The authors continue their accelerationist project and, in truly Marxist fashion, call for universal emancipation. They argue that as long as the left retain their preference for ‘folk politics’, they will be unable to overcome neoliberal hegemony. Srnicek and Williams propose that effective politics cannot be built around ideas of localism, direct action, and horizontalism. The Left, via their fetishization of direct democracy, are unable to create stable political structures and need to return to long-term, large-scale goals and to projecting a desirable future. Srnicek and Williams try to learn from the success of neoliberalism and call for a Mont Pelerin of the left. Not wishing, however, to copy the neoliberal mode of operation, their call is for a new hegemony of the left, centred around regaining a notion of the future – a notion which has currently been almost completely colonised by neoliberalist visions, and which equates to a movement towards a dystopian vision of the degradation of our planet. If the Left wants to regain the future, it must do philosophical work to reformulate the basic categories of progress, universalism and freedom. The authors show that under contemporary neoliberalism work is in a crisis that has recently only deepened due to surplus population, automation and jobless recovery. Not wishing to re-establish the classic slogan of social democracy (full employment) the authors call instead for a world without work. To achieve this end, we need three things: full automation, shorter working weeks and a universal basic income. The biggest problems with the implementation of these demands are not economic, rather, political and cultural issues related to deeply rooted views and beliefs on work ethic.

Jakub Gużyński – PhD student at the Institute of Philosophy, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. Currently working on his thesis on John Milbank’s political theology.

Krzysztof Tarkowski – PhD student at the Institute of Philosophy, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. Currently working on his thesis on Ian Hacking’s non-classical philosophy of science.

Nilüfer Pınar Kılıç
(Faculty of Communication in Ankara University)

Abstract:
It is possible to say that the discussions on technological determinism that can be read through Marshall McLuhan and Raymond Williams are reviving in researches on new communication technologies. On the one hand, there are those who uphold the potential, participatory and democratic qualities of technology, and thus advocate that societies will be democratised, and on the other hand, that they will increase inequalities over the commodity of media, surveillance, ownership and power relations. In other respects, it is possible to say that there is a political-economic approach which criticises technological determinism and in terms of being critical, realistic, inclusive ist that discusses different aspects of new communication technologies in macro context. For example, Fuchs, with the critique of technological determinism, states that social media is embedded in the contradictions and power structures of today’s society and argues that this media cannot cause revolutions as techno-optimists explain. Although new communication technologies reflect capitalism as a profit-making institution and unseen exploitation in them continues, on the other hand, individuals participate in this network to communicate and interact. In the context of all these discussions, it will discuss how individuals use new communication technologies in everyday life practices with Bourdieuan perspective. In digital inequality research through Bourdieu’s concepts, it is presented how factors shape inequality and distinction. It can be said that each user does not benefit from information and communication technologies equally. What extent users can benefit from these technologies are depends around many different variables such as income, education, geographic location, age, gender, access tools (hardware, software and link quality, etc.), skills, and auxiliary networks. In this context, it is possible to say that the social mechanisms and the logic of distinction work in digital practices and the inequalities in offline environments are transferred online ones.

Nilüfer Pınar Kılıç graduated at Gazi University, Department of Business Administration in 2007. Then, she worked in a public institution for five years. In 2012, when she started working at the Public Relations and Publicity Department of the Faculty of Communication in Ankara University, she completed her master’s degree at which she analysed the public relations practices of non-governmental organisations. She finished his doctoral degree in 2018 by writing her thesis named “Facebook Usage Practices of Elderly People with Kemalist Orientation in the Context of Populism Discussions”. She is still an academic staff at Ankara University, Faculty of Communication in Turkey.

Michał Kłosiński
(Faculty of Philology, University of Silesia, Katowice)

Abstract:
The paper will focus on presenting an analysis and interpretation of World of Warships videogame in the spirit of hermeneutics. Utilizing the notion of retrotopia, it will depict how this convergent and multimodal game constructs its gameplay and representations (assets) by offering players a playful and nostalgic return to the times of war-focused ship development of national navies from the end of XIX until the mid XX century. World of Warships features a complex and multilayered gameplay economy which is an essential element of the game’s progression and award system. Players earn credits, experience, coal, steel on top of being able to buy premium ships for real money and premium in-game currency – the dubloons. The idea of the game is for the players to work through various technological trees to research and purchase playable replicas of historical vessels which can be utilized in battles against other players or AI. My analysis and interpretation will focus on the problem of utilization of technology to recreate, with archivist scrutiny and historical accuracy both the ships that existed, and the ones which the developers bring to life from declassified military concepts and projects. The question here is twofold: how does virtual technology serve our nostalgia as a tool of creating retrotopian war-machine mythology; and, how the gameplay economy model fortifies and constructs a desire for this nostalgic mythology? The paper will utilize the works of Jean Baudrillard, Zygmunt Bauman, Roland Barthes, Fredric Jameson, Bernard Stiegler, as well as relate to the author’s own works on the hermeneutic of video games.

Michał Kłosiński, assistant professor at The Faculty of Philology, University of Silesia. An active member of Utopian Studies Society and The Society for Utopian Studies. During his doctoral studies he participated in the Paris Program in Critical Theory. He published various articles on Polish literature, literary theory and video games in: „International Journal of Baudrillard Studies”, „Pamiętnik Literacki”, “Teksty Drugie”, „Wielogłos”, „Śwat i Słowo”. He is the author of: Świat pęknięty. O poemach naiwnych Czesława Miłosza [Broken World. On „World. Naive poem” by Czeslav Milosz] (Warsaw 2013), Ratunkiem jest tylko poezja Baudrillard – Teoria – Literatura [Only poetry can save us. Baudrillard – Theory – Literature] (Warsaw 2015) and Hermeneutyka gier wideo. Interpretacja immersja, utopia [Hermeneutics of video games. Interpretation, immersion, utopia] (Warsaw 2018). He also co-edited (With Ksenia Olkusz and Krzysztof M. Maj) More After More. Essays Commemorating the Five-Hundredth Anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia (Krakow 2016) and Ekonomiczne teorie literatury (with Paweł Tomczok) [Economic theories of literature] (Katowice 2016). His current hermeneutical and post-phenomenological research can be placed at the intersection of literary theory, game studies and utopian studies.

Marcin Kozak
(Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw)

Abstract:
Usually gaming world is strictly associated with the sphere of pure joy and amusement. Even if certain video games are designed to be exceedingly difficult or competitive, in the end their purpose should be separated from the work. In fact, video games gameplay and mechanics are often more interlinked to the concept of “labour” than to “play”. We play during our worktime and we work during our playtime. It is not a coincidence that game thinking and game-based tools are used in a strategic manner to integrate with existing business processes. Steven Pool, the author of the article Working for the Man. Against the Employment Paradigm in Videogames argues that games hire us for imaginary, meaningless jobs that replicate the structures of real-world employment. An overview of modern computer games shows us that in last years the significant share of the products from game industry reproduce the world of repetitive jobs (in particular: sandboxes with large open worlds). Moreover, even the act of gaming is framed into the labour system due to the AI systems constantly learning from very digestible food for thoughts – from the IT perspective – basically, our behaviors translated into code. However, the goal-oriented approach, Sim-lifestyle, simulators of real-life job (for example, Garbage Truck Simulator, Farming Simulator, Euro Track Simulator) and other unsettling examples are just a beginning. The presentation ventures to explore question whether we are able to separate labour and joy within the existing set of mechanics. If not, there is a necessity to investigate further: to what extend contemporary shape of video games are rooted in neoliberalism? what distinguishes “corrupted” practices from those devoted to entertainment? What is the role of storytelling? The speech will examine both single- and multiplayer titles, as well as varied genres, in order to track theoretically relevant common grounds.

Marcin Kozak pursues his PhD at the faculty of “Artes Liberales” at the University of Warsaw. He graduated in law, philosophy and liberal arts within the College of Inter-Area Individual Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw and Charles University in Prague.

Eli Kramer
(Assistant Professor, Department of the Philosophy of Culture, Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw)

Abstract:
Since the dawn of professional philosophy in the nineteenth century the rich variety of -philosophical-literary genres have been eclipsed by the academic essay. This kind of academic exercise typically focuses on a linear and lucid argument (as I am doing right now, the irony is not lost on me). This narrowness of what counts as serious and legitimate modes of philosophical-literary genres has greatly weakened professional philosophy’s ability to offer support for robust and enriched cultural life. As secure tenure line/habilitation line positions ever shrink, and the justifications of pure scholarship in the humanities become ever hollower (for good and for ill), the dominance of this very kind of academic essay, never mind its presentation at an academic conference, is doomed for “real deletion.” As one step toward recovering robust philosophical-literary genres beyond the essay, ones that can thrive in the digital and post-digital world, the paper will articulate and defend what can be called the philosophical oeuvre of “dynamic images.” Dynamic images are reflectively charged versions of what Susanne Langer called “presentational symbols.” Presentational symbols are what the arts give us. Think of the way a painting, or even a good novel, can be educative and enriching for us, and yet we cannot fully determine a discursive story that exhaustively captures the kind of knowledge they give us. Unlike a presentational symbol, a dynamic image needs to be charged to incite a “reader” to new reflective and discursive engagement with the subject matter. Plato’s dialogues, Montaigne’s Essays, Emerson’s Nature, Eco’s philosophical novels like The Name of the Rose or Foucault’s Pendulum, and Tarkovsky’s Stalker (Сталкер) are examples of works written as dynamic images. Unlike a Van Gogh painting, the whole purpose of their significant forms is to incite our reflective life and discursive reasoning.

Eli Kramer is an Assistant Professor at the Department of the Philosophy of Culture, Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw, and an Editor at Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture (www.eidos.uw.edu.pl). He is a philosopher of culture who specializes in meta-philosophy, as well as the history and philosophy of higher learning. He is the co-editor of a new edited collection: Contemporary Philosophical Proposals for the University: Toward a Philosophy of Higher Education. His work has appeared in journals such as Syndicate Philosophy, the Philosophy of Education Yearbook, The Journal of School and Society, Democracy and Education (forthcoming) and as an introduction to a new anthology on Richard Rorty (that he is co-editing) entitled, Rorty and Beyond (Lexington Books, forthcoming). His areas of specialty are Philosophy of Culture, European and American Idealism, Classical American Philosophy, and Process Philosophy.

Julia Krzesicka
(Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw)

Abstract:
Taking as a starting point the thesis of Eva Illouz about the creation of “emotional capitalism” as a result of, among others, “therapeutization” of public and organizational discourse (Illouz, 2010: 98). I want to reflect on the role of emotions in the future of work. On the one hand, emotions become an important element of cognitive capitalism, in which the dematerialization of work and the subsequent domination of the service sector has reduced the importance of physical skills – manipulation of things – in favor of interpersonal competences – the ability to manipulate people and their emotions. (Szahaj 2014: 16-17). On the other hand, emotionality is closely related to the creation of an “individual self”, which increasingly becomes a subject of therapeutic culture based on “communicative competence”. The connection of the economic sphere with “communicative competence” made this first “deeply soaked by affect” (Illouz, 2010: 37). Although the imposed paradigm of communication frameworks (along with a whole set of procedures to manage emotions) makes it rather “rationalized emotionalism”, expressing emotions in the form of a message neutralizes emotional dynamics, requiring “suspense of someone’s emotional entanglement” (Illouz, 2010: 58) and at the same time allows to legitimize feelings by “the very fact of expressing them” (Illouz, 2010: 59). Work, as a social activity, has not escaped the influence of the paradigm of “therapeutization” both in the case of the “working subject” (whose success depends on the “emotional capital”), as well as in the case of the object and purpose of the work (which is being increasingly entangled with the problem of user experience – an experience that should be designed in such a way as to evoke certain emotions). Finally, looking into the future, it is worth asking a question about the possible role of widely understood “social robots” in such emerging fields of work.

Illouz, E. (2010). Uczucia w dobie kapitalizmu. Warszawa: Oficyna Naukowa.
Szahaj, A. (2014). Kapitalizm kognitywny jako ideologia. Etyka, 48, 17-25.

Julia Krzesicka – MA of Sociology, PhD Student within the Nature-Culture Program at University of Warsaw, Faculty of “Artes Liberales”.