This article addresses the underresearched issue of exclusion of a social group that consists of people experiencing involuntary childlessness, which has not been thoroughly researched in this perspective yet. Apart from the available literature on this subject, there were also used conclusions from research that represent only a small part of the author’s unpublished doctoral dissertation Niepłodność w narracjach małżeństw jako indywidualne i wspólne strategie uczenia się egzystencjalnego [Infertility in the accounts of married couples as individual and joint strategies of (...) existential learning]. The author argues that the marginalization of childless people is a consequence of receiving no external support from state organs and institutions (mostly from the educational and medical sector) that would make it possible to prevent infertility or, if it is diagnosed, to make available all possible ways to overcome it. (shrink)

Nicolas Bourriaud postuluje konieczność wyłonienia się „nowej nowoczesności” – w czasach nasilenia przepływu dóbr i kapitałów w skali globalnej, gdy rosną w siłę podmioty polityczne niekontrolowane przez władze poszczególnych państw, a każdego roku przybywa emigrantów liczonych w milionach. Francuski kurator twierdzi jednocześnie, że historyczny modernizm rezonuje i odbija się echem w tym, co określił najpierw mianem estetyki relacyjnej, a później powiązał z koncepcją sztuki postprodukcjonistycznej. Innym obszarem, w którym według Bourriauda nadal dochodzi do oddziaływania tradycji awangard artystycznych, okazała się twórczość (...) didżejów; to koresponduje z jego twierdzeniem, że „deejaying i sztuka współczesna to dwie odpowiadające sobie figury”. Celem artykułu jest przede wszystkim wykazanie, że pojęcie „didżej” stosowane w wywodach Bourriauda należy traktować jako kategorię historyczną. Pozwala to na możliwie szerokie określenie jej zakresu znaczeniowego, a w konsekwencji – wyznaczenie kontekstu, który dla samej koncepcji sztuki posprodukcjonistycznej okazuje się tak samo ważny jak myśl Michela de Certeau. Albowiem wytwory pola sztuk wizualnych mogą być opisywane przy pomocy kategorii wywodzących się z domeny audialnej. (shrink)

Since the mid-20th century, there has been a noticeable shift of interest in topics related to disability, illness, old age and the discourse of exclusion, both in practice and theory. Numerous artists, who often employed diverse strategies and aesthetics in their works, would confront similar themes, engaging in activities aimed at counteracting various forms and manifestations of social ostracism. This article describes and analyzes selected projects by Polish representatives of critical art and independent theatre which address these issues. The primary (...) aim of this text is not to catalogue as many artistic undertakings as possible but to highlight a certain trend and demonstrate the significance and purpose of art that boldly explores disability, illness, and deteriorating, ageing and dying bodies. Such themes are often taboo in consumer culture, while the task of art is to expose the mechanisms of exclusion and stigmatization and to draw public attention—often in a highly debatable manner—to topics that are omitted in the official discourse. The artistic projects discussed in the text demonstrate that persons with disabilities can be successful artists, dancers, performers, and actors. (shrink)

According to the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, every citizen has the right to health care. Unfortunately, some disadvantaged or minority groups have difficulties accessing a general practitioner, psychologist or other specialists in broader medical care. The article reviews scientific research on the issues outlined in the title using the following groups as examples: persons with a substance abuse disorder, the elderly, people with HIV or AIDS, immigrants, refugees and people from the LGBT community. For years, the World Health (...) Organization has stressed that improving the health of members of socially excluded groups can improve the health of the entire population. However, there is still no program in Poland focusing on combating inequalities in the healthcare system. The article presents research results from other countries. Unfortunately, in Poland, there is still a lack of studies on minority groups, their access to the health care system, and the attitudes towards those groups of medical personnel. (shrink)

2020 has been called the year of silence for a reason. Actions such as lockdown taken by the majority of countries in the world aiming at preventing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus influenced many different areas including surrounding us soundscape. Devoid of noise and sounds associated with human activity soundscape of cities attracted attention not only of researchers and sound ecologists but also people not professionally related to sound studies. Such a great interest in sound space was primarily due to (...) the scale of the changes that affected it. In order to better understand the nature of these changes and the response to them, I begin by presenting the state of the audiosphere before the pandemic, as well as the achievements in the field of acoustic ecology—a research direction that emerged in response to the state of sound space at the time. Referring to the writings of acoustic ecology pioneer Raymond M. Schafer and the continuators of his thought I present the role of sound in the city and its impact on humans. I also explain terms that have emerged from soundscape studies that make it easier to navigate the issues I am addressing. The knowledge presented in this way provides a starting point for understanding the sound pandemic situation, which I draw on the basis of a review of popular science literature such as BBC Future, Scientific American and The Washington Post. Using them, I present the areas in which audible changes took place and the reactions to these changes. I also describe the educational action taken at the time to explain the audible situation and to exploit its sonic potential. This overview concludes with an attempt to outline the future of the urban soundscape, based on the opinions of the authors of the mentioned publications as well as my own conclusions. (shrink)

Artykuł przybliża najważniejsze zagadnienia poruszane w ostatniej książce Salomé Voegelin zatytułowanej Uncurating sound. Knowledge with Voice and Hands, w której autorka rozwija filozofię dźwięku zaproponowaną w Listening to Noise and Silence oraz kontynuowaną w kolejnych monograficznych publikacjach. Autorka artykułu przybliża zagadnienia polityczności słuchania i możliwych światów dźwiękowych z tekstów Voegelin. W jej ujęciu omawiana książka kładzie nacisk na potrzebę przekształcenia instytucji sztuki w przestrzeń opiekuńczą, krytycznie analizuje współczesną sztukę, argumentując za koniecznością wyjścia poza instytucjonalne ramy i postuluje restrukturyzację zarówno dźwiękowej (...) wiedzy, jak i instytucji sztuki, szczególnie w obliczu nowych wyzwań, takich jak pandemia i postnormalność. (shrink)

The paper describes the origins and structure of artificial poetry, i.e. poetry created by programs (nowadays mainly bots based on artificial neural networks). It points out the difficulties involved in detecting human authorship of poems and the development of detection strategies in new research on artificial poetry. Author claims that traditional methods of text analysis are not sufficient to demonstrate human authorship. However, we must take into account, firstly, the embarrassing secret of poetic bots: indistinguishability is the result of human (...) intervention in the editing process of artificial poems; secondly, the fact that poetic Turing tests carry the dubious assumption of the existence of a pattern of human poeticity. (shrink)

If one embraces spiritual development as a kind of cognitive and moral development, then an important term here from a cognitive perspective and beyond might be “salvation.” But is it not reserved for the religious sphere? This article shows that it doesn't have to be. A new form of salvation suggested by Francophone philosopher Luc Ferry concerns first of all the resignation from a faith about a transcendent God, which is substituted with an undefined sacrum (what is holy, is highest) (...) in immanence. New form of ethic is becoming a popular alternative to religious spirituality today. However, traditional and new spirituality should not be treated as separate sets, as they do not necessarily compete with each other. Systems of spiritual development related to specific denominations will always provide inspiration even for atheist’s ethic. The latter can indicate that apart from religion, there is also a spirituality that can develop in a person. Nihilism is not the only alternative to religion, as sometimes the defenders of the old religious order try to show. (shrink)

One important dimension of the debate surrounding science communication is the tension between the implementation of the deficit model and the repeated calls for the adoption of dialogical and participatory models. This article aims to show this friction empirically and interpret it theoretically. The text uses the operation of science centers as a form of science communication. Niklas Luhmann's systems theory serves as a tool to capture the broad structural difficulty in implementing participatory demands in science communication. This paper is (...) based on research conducted in Polish science centers. It demonstrates that even in the organizationally favourable and relatively inclusive conditions offered by these centers, the environment as a whole cannot regulate the activities of the science system. It lacks knowledge of the essential social determinants of research activity and the areas of unfinished science. Conversely, the detailed findings of science are challenging to integrate such that they become comprehensively readable by the community without becoming a scientific black box. Luhmann's theory elucidates this fundamental difficulty in building the science-society relationship. From this perspective, a consistent and broad turn towards the dialogical and participatory model appears impossible. (shrink)

The article provides an introduction to the anthology devoted to studying theories and practices of discourses of exclusion. Framing the discussion by references to Kimberlé Crenshaw’s notion of intersectionality and Michel Foucault’s conceptualization of the relations between discourse and power, the essay stresses the multiple forms of exclusion and entangled power differentials that determine a person’s identity and social status and argues for the need to employ an interdisciplinary perspective. The overview of the issues analyzed in the anthology is guided (...) by the recognition of the complex links between theory and practice and the awareness that exclusions reinforce precarity and dismantle networks of support. (shrink)

The text provides an introduction to analyses of the social exclusion of mothers of children with autism spectrum disorders. The aim is to highlight and discuss several stories from the increasing number of printed accounts by mothers describing their daily struggles with disability and social judgment. The discourses of exclusion concerning this social group are a hihgly interesting research topic due to its multidimensionality and stereotypes ingrained in society.

While in the recent years violations of asylum-seeker rights have been increasingly documented in EU Member States, the crisis at the EU-Belarus border has opened up a whole new chapter in this area. In response to the perceived migrant instrumentalisation by the Belarusian regime, several Member States—Latvia, Lithuania and Poland—have openly introduced long-term, far-reaching and blanket legislative measures that severely restricted the right to seek asylum and formalised pushbacks—contrary to their obligations under EU law and international refugee and human rights (...) law. This paper approaches the topic from a comparative socio-legal perspective. Apart from a legal analysis of the Latvian, Lithuanian and Polish domestic measures, it is based on interviews with non-EU nationals affected, as well as NGO representatives, volunteers and legal practitioners who have been providing legal and humanitarian assistance to people crossing from Belarus. The paper, first, offers an overview of Latvian, Lithuanian and Polish responses to the events at the border and looks at how the relevant measures affect the non-EU nationals involved. Second, it engages with the migrant instrumentalisation paradigm, relied on by the governments to derogate from EU and international legal framework, and explores the EU-level response to the crisis. This study argues that EU’s border with Belarus has de facto become an exclusion zone where protection seekers are deprived of their right to claim asylum and continuously exposed to various types of inhuman and degrading treatment. It also demonstrates that the migrant instrumentalisation concept is problematic on multiple levels and does not correspond to the realities on the ground. (shrink)

This study aimed to discover whether it is possible to transfer attachment vocalizations theory to the human-dog relationship. This study looked at whether people who identified as pet parents showed higher distractions when performing an attention-related task than non-pet parents people with dogs. Also used were the sounds of a baby crying, a neutral dog voice (sniffing), another potentially distracting sound, and silence. 23 people with dogs were examined. A modified version of the Bourdon-Wiersma test and the Lexington Attachment to (...) Pet Scale were used. The study found no significant statistical difference between the stimuli used and between the silence and the rest of the stimuli. Despite the lack of expected effects in the study, it is an important introduction to the subject of pet parenting. It also shows that the chosen way of measuring distraction with emotional stimuli may need to be more accurate. I also show possible future research directions. (shrink)

A signboard is an element of the linguistic landscape of a given place. The linguistic landscape is a space open to everyone, but it may be experienced differently by people from various generations. To examine the extent and quality of comfort or discomfort resulting from linguistic exclusion in public spaces, in the article the linguistic landscape of the center of Poznań is analyzed in terms of the absence and presence of the native language of residents and visitors to this place. (...) The research material comes from the most frequented places in this city and includes signs of private establishments (“bottom-up tokens”), which contribute to the linguistic landscape of Poznań. The study of linguistic exclusion takes into account the diverse linguistic competencies of five living generations of Poles. It aims to identify potential causes of the feeling of exclusion in open urban spaces for specific groups of Poles. (shrink)

According to musicologist Christopher Small, the treatment of music in musicology carries fundamentally flawed historical premises. Instead of focusing on music through art „objects“, anything understood as „music“ should be examined on the grounds of its spatiotemporal appearance, as a social activity of musicking and the unfolding event. The emphasis of the verb „musicking“ instead of the substantive „music“ signifies a reinterpretation of a static into a processual concept. According to Small, musical meaning is formed with regards to the time (...) and space of the immersive situation and the bodily encounter of participating individuals. This processual intervention over existing musical concepts through reinterpretation as „musicking“ opens the door to a broader philosophical scope. In order to approach two seemingly opposed interpretations of the subject matter mentioned above, I will attempt a reinterpretation of Small with reference to Arthur Schopenhauer’s concept of the „Will“, but with a more detailed emphasis on the expanded principle of the „Dyonisian“ and „Apollonian“ as suggested by Friedrich Nietzsche. I will further suggest some criteria for interpretation of any potential „musicking“ through several points of contention between Small’s musicology and Nietzsche’s philosophy. For this, I will utilize Nietzsche’s philosophical opposition between Being and Becoming serving as foundations of knowledge and art. The suggestion is that, while the entanglement of the Apollonian „image“ and the Dyonisian „rush“ enables the emergence of music as art, the foundation of Small’s „musicking“ lies in the non-ethical character of the Dyonisian—in what lies „behind“ the phenomenon and conceptualization of it. This ultimately questions the implication of music „as“ art, as it suggests that any justification thereof can not be considered outside of the subjective disposition encountering the event, nor beyond the individual disposition emerging within it. „Musicking“ doesn’t emerge with any cultural, social, symbolic or teleological purpose, but attains any one of these as soon as it’s designated „as-such“ by those principles that enable the concept to emerge in the first place. This, despite its broadly influential treatise, ultimately reveals the limits of Small’s „musicking“. (shrink)

In her poetry collection The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak (2021), Grace Lau, a Hong Kong-born Chinese Canadian poet, showcases different experiences of exclusion and inclusion, some connected to the long history of prejudice and discrimination. The aim of this article is to discuss depictions of three types of exclusion experienced by Lau – that of a postcolonial subject, a queer subject, and, finally, a queer subject of colour – and the impact those experiences have on her identity. (...) The analysis of three of Lau’s poems – "Birth/Right”, “Another God”, and “Perfect Groupie” – provides an insight into her reflections on different instances of exclusion she experienced, whether motivated by her ethnicity and nationality, her sexual orientation, or the combination of both, and the impact they had on her identity as a queer postcolonial subject. (shrink)

This paper is a critical commentary on Walter Veit’s book "A philosophy for the science of animal consciousness." My goal is to show that although Veit succeeds in presenting a compelling account of animal consciousness, he may have unintentionally undermined the purpose of such science. I argue that, despite the author’s claims, his theory is not as empirically grounded as he makes it out to be. Paradoxically, some of Veit’s arguments against his opponents seem to be double-edged. Still, I also (...) argue that this is a necessary cost, as an alternative would be to succumb to a particular form of metatheoretical anthropomorphism. In effect, we end up with a surprising conclusion that we need many sciences of different consciousnesses, which seems at odds with Veit’s Darwinian continuity assumption. However, this only goes to show that the book is well worth discussing. (shrink)

This article traces the discursive representation of cultural trauma and social exclusion of the inhabitants of low-income neighborhoods of Medellín in the reportage written by Colombian journalists. The three books written by Ricardo Aricapa, Alonso Salazar and Juan Camilo Castañeda Arboleda cover the period from the 1980s, years of extreme violence, to the first decades of the new millennium, representing marginalized people dragged into the narco business, youth gangs and armed conflict. The article’s aim is to examine how violent urban (...) life is represented in the aforementioned reportage and how these books function as secondary witnesses to cultural trauma. By including the voices of the marginalized groups and incorporating them to the national discourse, these books demand emotional, institutional and symbolic reparation and reconstruction. (shrink)

The article centres on a contemporary short film and two plays that were inspired by the story of Gerhard Herbert Kretschmar, the first known victim of the Nazi programme of the extermination of people with disabilities; these are: Robert De Feo and Vito Palumbo’s Child K (2014), Kristofer Blindheim Grønskag’s Kinder K (2012), and Weronika Murek’s Feinweinblein (2015). I examine verbal and visual discourses of human disqualification that these works reveal and challenge or reinforce. Following Tobin Siebers, I define disqualification (...) as “a symbolic process” that excludes individuals from being considered rightful human beings, thereby exposing them to “unequal treatment, bodily harm, and death” (Siebers, 2013, p. 23). As regards visual discourses of human disqualification, the article argues that even though each play or film employs a different representational strategy, which can respectively be called: monsterization, sublimation, and normalization, they all render the “severely” disabled body of Gerhard Herbert Kretschmar invisible. In other words, they hide the “unsightly” from view, hence denying full representation to those body-minds that fall significantly outside the “norm” and perpetuating their aesthetic disqualification. (shrink)

Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy narrative and novel saga, as exemplified by the “The Edge of the World” short story, borrows largely from J. R. R. Tolkien’s depiction of elves in defining most of their traits and the relationship between them and humans. Sapkowski, however, clearly transforms the image of the (predominantly) benevolent elf defined by Tolkien. The aim of this article is to explore the way in which Sapkowski portrays the elven race as sovereign in their exclusion from the world of (...) humanity. Sapkowski’s story allows the group to maintain its unique motivations, resisting morally dualistic stereotyping at the same time. Moreover, because neither humanity nor elfdom may claim moral superiority in their conflict, the colonial experience of the elves is not simply appropriated by the author as an example of Indigenous victimhood. Rather, it serves the purpose of presenting readers with a multifaceted tapestry of colonial conflict contained within a fantasy world. The players of this world, though opposed and prone to othering their enemies, are nevertheless rhetorically equal. (shrink)

With the rising popularity of South Korean worldwide culture (called hallyu or “the Korean wave”) which presents us with images of beautiful stars and k-beauty products, it is worth exploring the nature and impact of Korean facial beauty standards. The following article analyzes the depiction of South Korean appearance norms in the Korean American novel If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha. In the introduction, I familiarize the reader with the novel’s author and plot. Next I give an overview (...) of what South Korean beauty norms entail and explain whether they are inspired by Caucasian appearance standards. Finally, I analyze the novel in-depth with a focus on two characters who undergo plastic surgery, a popular practice in South Korea. Applying the concepts of beauty work, aesthetic labor and social capital, I argue that to Cha’s characters the striving for fulfilling restrictive facial beauty norms represents: an employee’s duty, a desire to escape stigma and social exclusion, and a hope to improve one’s life circumstances. The article therefore approaches beauty as a specific discourse of inclusion and exclusion. (shrink)

The article discusses the concept of multisensuality in the satirical prints of the Georgian era in England, focusing on how the sensory perception enhances the visual humor. Drawing upon historical and cultural contexts, this study investigates how English caricaturists employed various sensory elements, such as sight, sound, smell, taste and touch to convey satire and provoke emotional responses among viewers. Ten satirical prints by five different authors were chosen for the analysis.

In the presented article, I consider what the process of designing the future can be. In detail, I am interested in what role touch plays in this process, combined with the practice of speculative imagination. In order to better understand this phenomenon, I use the transdisciplinary model of knowledge production, whose specific feature is the crossing and blurring of boundaries between fields of knowledge. The goal of this activity is to produce new forms of knowledge by combining methods and cognitive (...) tools derived from science, art, humanities, and crafts. In such a context, I am interested in how discursive practices and body practices are complementary. As a research perspective, I adopt the currents of posthumanism and new materialism oriented toward the analysis of human and nonhuman expressions of agency and processes of self-organization of matter. The starting point for the considerations presented here is a critical analysis of the vision of the future in the form of the absence of any future inscribed in the concept of the Anthropocene. Referring to the considerations of feminist thinkers such as Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, and Karen Barad, I analyze what the future, understood as the commonality of the human and nonhuman, in the perspective of planetary changes, can be. (shrink)

The article examines reports of natural disasters in the 18th century Austrian newspaper "Wienerisches Diarium" to gain insights into how people captured the extraordinary sensory experiences of such events in written form. By analysing a digitised corpus of over 300 newspaper issues, the study identifies 302 text passages referring to natural disasters, among them 285 news reports, and explores textual traces of (multi)sensuality present within this material. The close reading and semantic annotation of the textual findings reveals that comparisons to (...) familiar sensations are commonly used to convey the sensory experiences of natural disasters, allowing readers to (better) relate to and understand the extreme events. At the same time, touch and vision constitute the most frequently mentioned senses, while smell and taste only play a minor role in early modern disaster depiction. In addition, the study finds that earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are more likely to include multisensory descriptions compared to other types of disasters. These and further findings shed light on when and how (multi)sensory impressions of disasters were conveyed in written form within early modern news. (shrink)

The transmission, emergence, and dissemination of features of racial differentiation are based on the interplay of different sensory perceptions, as this contribution will illustrate. For this purpose, examples from ethnographic travelogues from German East Africa and from the time of German colonial rule were selected to examine the functioning of tactile perception by means of the descriptions of skin colors and skin decorations. The source material reveals multisensuality in the form of synesthesia of the sense of sight with the sense (...) of touch, in that the perception of tactile stimuli is determined less by direct touch and more by the visual representation of haptic properties. (shrink)

This section contains four original articles addressing the matters of interaction, coexistence and representation of the human senses in various historical and cultural contexts. The multisensory experience of the world in relations to the past, the present and the future constitutes the main theme of the selected articles. The authors analyze how, in various cultural texts and historical moments, human experience was depicted through the prism of sensory perception, sometimes combined with sensory memory and the powerfulness/powerlessness of the (non)human corporeality. (...) The authors analyze a variety of historical and cultural sources to answer the question of the impact of multisensory experience on our view of the world: in the past, the present and the future. Nina C. Rastinger in her article “Capturing Extraordinary Multisensory Experiences in Writing: Reports on Natural Disasters in an 18th Century Newspaper Corpus” deals with written representations of natural disasters, which constitute extraordinary multisensory experiences, in historical newspaper texts. Natalia Giza in her study “Multisensuality in the Satirical Prints of the Georgian Era in England” shows how sensory perception enhanced visual humor in the satirical prints of Georgian England, examining how English caricaturists used various sensory elements such as sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Jules Sebastian Skutta in his paper “Tactile Vision and Othering: Ethnographic Engagements and Racial Differentiations in 19th Century Travelogues” demonstrates on the basis of ethnographic travelogues from German East Africa and from the time of German colonial rule that the transmission, emergence, and dissemination of features of racial differentiation are based on the interplay of different sensory perceptions. Finally, Bartosz Mroczkowski, in the article entitled “Designing the Future Through Touch” focuses on the sense of touch in the process of designing the future. The aforementioned articles illustrate that multisensuality is a multidimensional concept that requires a thorough analysis from different academic perspectives and with the use of various methodological approaches. (shrink)