Recent ecological and technological developments have impacted continental philosophy. As a result, philosophers such as Isabelle Stengers, Peter Sloterdijk, Michel Serres and Bruno Latour have been providing us with a set of theoretical tools to analyse the present. Notably, they have problematized philosophy’s mastery at identifying and carefully dissecting social issues and its concomitant difficulty with offering ways to think constructively about alternatives to the status quo. In this context, the research project will deal with the question of world-building and world-building practices. It will propose an investigation of constructive gestures in philosophy and systematically examine how selected contemporary thinkers renew philosophy in their turn to ‘postcritique’. What is more, it will consider why and how philosophers move from social diagnostics and critique towards gestures of affirmation and construction and investigate concrete implications of this shift in practice. At the heart of this project lies the question of habitation, co-habitation and habitability in the world today.
Iwona’s research interests lie within the area of twentieth- and twenty-first-century French and German philosophy, political thought and Theory (French, Critical, Literary, Feminist, Queer, Anarchist). Her first monograph, Theorizing Contemporary Anarchism. Solidarity, Mimesis and Radical Social Change (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), considers the concept of universality and social transformation in contemporary philosophy. Her second monograph (in progress) deals with the question of how to think politics and nonhumans together.
Project title:
How to Build a Common World? Contemporary Continental Philosophy and the Question of World Formation
Area of research:
Philosophy and Literature
Fellowship period:
01 Oct 2019 - 30 Sep 2022
