Fast Science, Neoliberal Regimes of Productivity and ICT Technologies: Academy in the Era of COVID-19 Pandemic

The goal of the article is to answer the following question: what does the pandemic of COVID -19 reveal in the context of the discussion dedicated to the ways of the functioning of the academy today? Therefore the subject of the analysis is not the disease itself nor its cultural meanings, but the phenomena that, although present before the pandemic outbreak, became far more clear, perceptible and acutely experienced. In the article, our interest is focused on the increase of the pace of virtual social interactions, the speed of information transfer, the enhancement of academic regimes of productivity, the surplus of knowledge generated within the fields of humanities and social sciences and the role of information and communications technologies played in these processes. The main argument is that, the pandemic of COVID-19 shows how, in the context of the academy, the entire logics of late capitalist social relations and neoliberal governing of social subjects is focused.

The Experience of Pandemic Time in Late Capitalism

The subject of the article is the transformation of social time in the pandemic reality. The situation caused by COVID-19 provided a unique opportunity to observe sudden changes in the social rhythm. In the considerations conducted from the perspective of time studies, the author tries to specify what these changes are, and also considers how social time is shaped in the economy of late capitalism. The observations show that changes in the organization and experience of social time during a pandemic are shaped mainly on the basis of three categories: power, technology and work. The experience of the crisis of the usual feeling of time and of the uncertainty about the future, resulted in the rise of questions pertaining to the new concepts of time, the effects of this transformation and the upcoming social changes.

Artykuł stanowi uzupełnienie interpretacji wyników badawczych uzyskanych w ramach projektu „Aranżowanie temporalności: kulturowe praktyki zarządzania czasem” nr 2017/27/N/HS3/00479 finansowanego przez Narodowe Centrum Nauki. Podczas projektu zostało zrealizowanych 57 wywiadów prowadzonych zgodnie z kwestionariuszem badawczym, dostępny na stronie internetowej projektu: choreography-of-time.weebly.com/uploads/6/7/7/5/67758073/ethnographic_interview_questions_in_polish_language.pdf.

Virtual Screens, Global Networks. Film Culture Participation in the Wake of Pandemic

The article discusses the subject of virtualization – the process of partial transmission significant discursive fields into the Internet – of the film culture, which is defined as the group of practices and discourses accompanying cinema, which connect it with the socio-cultural environment. According to the author, the virtualization process is specifically exposed during pandemics and social isolation, what is presented in the text from the perspective of film audience. Pandemic is treated here as liminoidal moment, in which, due to the disorder of cinema’s functioning, its social networks happen to transform in certain manner. By interpreting results of his own fieldwork, author points at general dynamics of virtualization as an element of contemporary film culture, highlighting both the possibilities opened by such situation and dangers it brings.

Just Sitting. Dimensions of Sitting from a Zen Buddhist Perspective

The article deals with the subject of the sitting figure, which seems to be an important element of both practice and reflection in Buddhism. The real inspiration to write this article was the introduction of quarantine in many countries, including Poland, and this fact certainly changed the lifestyle of many people, contributing significantly to the immobilization of many of them. Looking at this situation through the prism of Buddhism, especially Zen Buddhism, to which most of the information contained in this text refers, would be best considered only as a contribution to reflection on the cultural dimensions of the „sitting figure„. This figure, at least from the Buddhist perspective, seems to be an important element conditioning the view of reality.

* Cykl opublikowany na blogu I'm not Swiss: Szwajcaria inna niżmyślisz Agnieszki Kamińskiej, https://iamnotswiss.blog.