Ewa Domańska Towards an Archeontology of the Dead body (A Contemplative Approach to the Past) Ewa Domaiiska distinguishes a distinct contemplative approach to the past which - unlike documentary, commemorative or 'oral evidence' approaches - undertakes, among other things, reflection on various aspects of the dead body's existence and functioning. She traces the facets of 'end-ism' in historical reflection, which is increasingly skeptical of the prospects of historiography characterised by anthropocentrism, ethnocentrism, eurocentrism and phallocentrism. Thus many scholars think that present-day historiography should first of all study historians - their motivations, sponsors and backgrounds. Those who want the Third Millennium to be a new beginning for historiography postulate that scholars should give more thought to death, the deceased and their corpses. Domaflska's claim is that in future-oriented human sciences questions concerning the past cannot be answered until we refer to ontology, to those thinkers who - like Martin Heidegger - study existence, death and the issue of being.
PL
Ewa Domańska Towards an Archeontology of the Dead body (A Contemplative Approach to the Past) Ewa Domaiiska distinguishes a distinct contemplative approach to the past which - unlike documentary, commemorative or 'oral evidence' approaches - undertakes, among other things, reflection on various aspects of the dead body's existence and functioning. She traces the facets of 'end-ism' in historical reflection, which is increasingly skeptical of the prospects of historiography characterised by anthropocentrism, ethnocentrism, eurocentrism and phallocentrism. Thus many scholars think that present-day historiography should first of all study historians - their motivations, sponsors and backgrounds. Those who want the Third Millennium to be a new beginning for historiography postulate that scholars should give more thought to death, the deceased and their corpses. Domaflska's claim is that in future-oriented human sciences questions concerning the past cannot be answered until we refer to ontology, to those thinkers who - like Martin Heidegger - study existence, death and the issue of being.
This article explores the reception of French Theory in Poland after 1989. I argue that post-modern tendencies entered the Polish humanities in a distorted form, having travelled via the USA. I propose the hypothesis that the transplantation of the concept of power‑knowledge, which was central to the US‑American take on Michel Foucault, led to something that I term “the Foucault Effect.” It became entangled in the processes of democratization and political and economic transformation taking place in the 1990s, meaning that on the one hand it “raised consciousness” of power mechanisms, while on the other hand promoting a sense of subjecthood that was a product of power relations and thus was deprived of agency. I argue that regardless of the critique of anthropocentrism that is prevalent in the contemporary humanities, the socio-‑political situation in the world today demands a return of the strong subject, whose figuration would take into account lessons learned from French Theory.
Knowledge of the Past: Future PerspectivesThe purpose of this article is to present trends and research perspectives that have dominated the various avant-garde tendencies of contemporary historiography and multidisciplinary research of the past, and an attempt to sketch the trajectory of their development in the future. Based on extensive research of the contents of the latest volumes of almost three hundreds periodicals published in various fields of the humanities and social sciences, the author argues that the future of reflection on the past is fundamentally linked to the progressive efforts to build a holistic and complementary knowledge, which is non-anthropocentric, post-European and post-human. Its aim is to connect the humanities and social sciences with the natural sciences (life sciences, biological sciences) and techno sciences as well as to include indigenous knowledges. This new knowledge is highly influenced by effects of inquiries from the life sciences, cognitive science and neurosciences. Hence, peripheral, most current and often radical trends, such as transnational / transcultural history, environmental or ecological history, multispecies history, indigenous history, big history, biohistory and neurohistory have a chance to become in the future the most dynamically developing subdisciplines of historical research. The author ends the article proposing a new definition of history as inquiry into the rules of co-existence of various (also multispecies) communities inhabiting the Earth, in the past and the present, and endowing them with meanings according to present and future needs.
Ewa Domańska Towards an Archeontology of the Dead body (A Contemplative Approach to the Past) Ewa Domaiiska distinguishes a distinct contemplative approach to the past which - unlike documentary, commemorative or 'oral evidence' approaches - undertakes, among other things, reflection on various aspects of the dead body's existence and functioning. She traces the facets of 'end-ism' in historical reflection, which is increasingly skeptical of the prospects of historiography characterised by anthropocentrism, ethnocentrism, eurocentrism and phallocentrism. Thus many scholars think that present-day historiography should first of all study historians - their motivations, sponsors and backgrounds. Those who want the Third Millennium to be a new beginning for historiography postulate that scholars should give more thought to death, the deceased and their corpses. Domaflska's claim is that in future-oriented human sciences questions concerning the past cannot be answered until we refer to ontology, to those thinkers who - like Martin Heidegger - study existence, death and the issue of being.
This article considers how the inspirations coming from posthumanities (and posthumanism) affect historical reflection and what kind of challenges and opportunities they present to historical studies. The author proposes a definition of posthumanities and explains why she considers it as an important and even necessary subject of reflection for contemporary historians. The text also shows the difference between the treatment of animals as an interesting topic of historical research and the possibility of a new postanthropocentric and multispecies historiography inspired by posthumanism and animal studies.
This article locates Anna Zagrodzka’s project Alternaria alternata in the context of reflections on the relations between genocide and ecocide as manifested in problems of conservation of Nazi extermination camps. The artist’s photographs depicting elements of the landscape of death camps chronicle the events and processes of deterioration that result from objects, such as buildings, walls, fences and plants, being inhabited by bacteria, fungi and lichen. Approaching the environmental microbiology of mass killing sites by applying the methods of laboratory research to examine elements of buildings, artefacts, water and the soil offers incontrovertible evidence of the relentless vitality of life at such locations. In this article, I show how Zagrodzka’s research contributes to the laboratorial humanities, on the one hand, as well as to field research humanities, on the other. I also demonstrate how her work applies the arts of attentiveness that are typical of the research methods of multispecies ethnography. Analysis of the artist’s work shows that the continued existence (or survival) of Homo sapiens will require the preparation for difficult and long-lasting processes of adaptation to changing conditions brought about by ever new threats, crises and potential catastrophes. Adaptation can be assisted by artworks and by research in the humanities that create future scenarios enabling preparation for possible, though often unforeseeable, events.
In this analysis of 'Zarys historii historiografii polskiej ('An Outline History of Polish Historiography') by Andrzej F. Grabski, the Author stresses the ideological dimensions of historiography and the relation between historical knowledge and political power. If modem academic history can be viewed as the ideological support of the nation-state, then the study of Polish historiography can serve as a useful introduction to the history of Poland itself. This is so, because the history of the nation cannot be separated from the different representations of it.
In this interview, conducted during the XXIII International Congress of Historical Sciences in Poznań (2022), Olufunke Adeboye (Professor of Social History at the University of Lagos, Nigeria) discusses the problems of decolonisation of African history, the relations between academic historiography and popular history, new trends in historical writing, the importance of theory for historical research, and the problems of historical education in Nigeria.