Are We Post-Enlightenment? Queer Questions for Epistemic (In)Justices. A Commentary to Dr Polynczuk-Alenius': ‘Reality’, ‘truth’, and the democratic imagination in journalistic reporting on antiracist, queer, and feminist activism in Poland
On the 08 May 2024, Dr Kulpa presented a Commentary: "Are We Post-Enlightenment? Queer Questions for Epistemic (In)Justices. A Commentary to Dr Polynczuk-Alenius': ‘Reality’, ‘truth’, and the democratic imagination in journalistic reporting on antiracist, queer, and feminist activism in Poland", at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, PL.
Dr Kulpa focused the attention on the productive possibilities of thinking queerly about media-political conglomerates organising democratic practices in the contemporary world.
While 'anti-gender' politics and mobilisations are globally active and questioning individual rights and freedoms, and spawning transphobic, misogynist, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, and other hateful narratives (as evidenced recently in e.g. the RESIST Project Report, 2024, https://theresistproject.eu/what-we-have-found/), it is especially important to engage and counterbalance these discourses, and thus to support already shrinking, democratic spaces of resistance and resilience.
Responding to, and building on Dr Polynczuk-Alenius' arguments, he postulated active engagement with queer imagination’s unruly, creative possibilities to stimulate research, reflection, and democratic practice.
Giving attention to practices of epistemic (in)justice and geopolitics of knowledge production is an important step forward in rethinking structures of the occidentalist ‘coloniality of knowledge’ (Quijano).
In this context, Dr Kulpa asks if the contemporary shifts in how individuals, societies and media relate to issues of ‘truth’, ‘subjectivity/objectivity’, often captured under the banner of ‘post-truth society’, are not a reflection of a more fundamental ‘paradigm shift’ (Kuhn)?
He asks queer question: Are We Post-Enlightenment? And why it matters.
Citation
Kulpa, R. (2024, May). Are We Post-Enlightenment? Queer Questions for Epistemic (In)Justices. A Commentary to Dr Polynczuk-Alenius': ‘Reality’, ‘truth’, and the democratic imagination in journalistic reporting on antiracist, queer, and feminist activism in Poland. Presented at Public Lectures of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
Presentation Conference Type
Keynote
Conference Name
Public Lectures of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences
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