Moderation, Community and Non-Human Perspective as Ecological Strategies of (Post-)Art Towards Climate Crisis

The foundations of the culture as well as of the current climate and ecological crisis rely on two paradigms that require deconstruction in context of the anthropocene, namely the capitalistic and anthropocentric paradigms. The author not only criticizes them, but also looks for alternatives among the post-humanistic philosophies and post-artistic practises that exceed modernistic traditions as well as autonomous and representative art. New tools for describing and changing reality can be provided by post-artistic practices which focus on action, social use, communities and immaterial benefits. This situates post-art in contraposition to institutionalized overproduction, anthropocentric individualism and market-based rules.

Radical Inclusivity. Post-human Perspectives for Subjective Inclusion of Other-Than-Human Beings in Management Processes

The subject of the article is the issue of subjective inclusion of other-than-human beings in management processes. Due to the association of participation with human cognitive tools in management theory, consequent exclusion of other-than-human beings occurs. The aim of the research is to find perspectives in the sources of post-humanist philosophy that make it possible to transcend the anthropocentric barriers. Based on a review of selected literature – Actor-Network Theory, Object-Oriented Ontology, Dark Ecology, and Kinship – the research shows that subjective inclusion of other-than-human beings in management processes is possible. It requires abandonment of the judgement of non-human agency measured by humanly perceived consciousness in favour of a vision of symbiotic co-creation. The article also derives the category of radical inclusivity as a process of changing the perception of the role of other-than-human beings within management, with a particular emphasis on the practice of inclusive management.

Advanced NLP Procedures as Premises for the Reconstruction of the Idea of Knowledge

The article presents the current state of development of the Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology, in particular the GPT-3 language model, and presents its consequences for understanding the phenomenon of knowledge. The NLP technology has been experiencing remarkable development recently. The GPT-3 language model presents a level of advancement that allows it to generate texts as answers to general questions, as summaries of the presented text, etc., which reach the level surpassing the analogous level of human texts. These algorithmic operations lead to the determination of the probability distribution of its components. Texts generated by such a model should be considered as autonomous texts, using immanent, implicit knowledge embedded in language. This conclusion raises questions about the status of such knowledge. Help in the analysis is provided also by the theory of discourse, as well as the theory of discursive space based on it, that proposes the interpretation of knowledge as a trajectory of discourses in a dynamical space. Recognizing that knowledge may also be autonomous, and in particular not be at the exclusive disposal of humans, leads to the question of the status of artificial cognitive agents, such as the GPT-3 language model.

The Post-human Potential of a Polish Comic Book Fandom

Comic books are an undeniable part of the modern culture, gaining more popularity every year. Reading comics influences the perception of communing with other products of culture, which results in the transformation of reading into new cultural practices. They may be the result of individual participation, however, the effectiveness of undertakings may often depend on the results of teamwork and collective participation practices. Initially, the grassroots movements of comic book enthusiasts are transformed with time into forms of structured activity. Such an organized community has the potential to implement the assumptions of critical post-humanism, according to which man is not hyper-causative and should participate with actors other than human. This work outlines the historical background of the comic book fandom, considers the idea of participation in culture, analyzes the initiatives taken with particular emphasis on socially engaged activities and content, characterizes the problems faced by the community and relates individual aspects of its functioning to critical post-humanism. The research methodology was based on the analysis of the literature on the subject, virtual ethnology and interviews. The obtained results showed the comic book community as a heterogeneous community that grew out of the need for change. This fandom is involved in initiatives related to diversity, ecology, emancipation and equality, at the same time trying to popularize the comic culture medium.

Managing a More-Than Human Team in the Cat Cafe „Kociarnia”

The article in the form of organizational ethnography explores managing feline-human team, and this way becomes part of animal turn in social sciences, especially management. Research problem is managing the team built with various actors, in management studies known as resources, which is placed in the space of Cat Cafe „Kociarnia”. Objects of research are the employees of the cafe, and purpose is exploring the principles of animal participation in the team under the hypothesis that animals are workers of the cafe. The research checks in which way and to what extent are animals part of the team, what roles are they performing, what relationship is occurring between them and other teams members – both human and non-human (for example cats but also the place) – and how their membership is perceived by human coworkers. Getting to know cats as the group of workers is only possible by looking at them (with interviews) through the eyes of their human coworkers. The research discovers ways of cats participation in the work team and demonstrates the importance of creating the team along the (non-essentialistically understood) cats nature. There seem to be just one main rule of cats participation in the researched team: to be a cat and to feel good in cat cafe.