Codzienność i polityka. Społeczny wymiar nowej duchowości w polskiej sztuce współczesnej

Current interest in religion, religiosity and spirituality may be viewed as belonging to a post-secular turn, representatives of which are related to critical, social and philosophical, leftist theory. Literary studies of the Bible, traditional religious iconography and contemporary art have become sources of extra-ecclesiastical, feminist and queer theology. Post-humanist thought is an equally significant theoretical context or the so-called ‘new spirituality’ in Polish contemporary art as post-secularism. In her essential study, Bio-transfigurations. Art and Aesthetics of Posthumanism, Monika Bakke argues that it is impossible to speak today about a single posthumanism, however, for Rosi Braidotty, the leading spokesperson for posthumanism, post-secularism seems to be a notable point of reference. It is also note-worthy that numerous tenets of Braidotti’s posthumanism seem to correspond with extant conceptualisations of posthumanism in academic discourse: the struggle for emancipation of subjects (new spirituality speaks of transgression and transcending individual limitations); immanentism (sacrum accessible in earthly life); deconstruction of oppositions and a tendency towards holism, or even monism (in posthumanism, Spinoza-inspired new/vitalist materialism of Braidotti); emphasis on the affective dimension of cognitive processes (including, in social sciences); importance of experience; and connecting a critical with an affirmative approach. The work by Ola Kozioł, Honorata Martin and Magdalena Starska provides examples of individualised spirituality, focused on everyday life, with an interest in interpersonal and inter-species relationships. The political in these artforms is expressed in an examination of risks and direct formulation of postulates for social change (Kozioł), but its primary expression is a commitment to everyday life, opening an individual to a search for meanings beyond themselves, in group activities, in a dialogue with others, with nature and in inter-species relationships (Kozioł, Starska, Martin). A postuhmanist perspective points at new forms of spirituality, manifested in a very different realm than the religion of the future, proclaimed by the pioneer of sociology, Emil Durkheim, or ‘the cult of the individual’. It presupposes a communality and a relational construction of meanings; it has feminist aspects and sometimes reiterates counter-cultural postulates, resembling those put forward by the 1960s counter-culture.