The prevailing modern concept of knowledge
has been built upon Cartesian cogito, the thinking ‘I’, as the constitutive
factor of knowledge. For Descartes, “body is always an obstacle for the mind
when it aspires to think”. Hence, in
Cartesian perspectivism, there is a lonely and static eye observing reality
external to it.
The corporeal and affective turns in social
sciences and humanities have, however, relocated critical attention from
language, discourse and representations (“the mind”) to matter, embodiment and
nature (“the body”). This is accompanied by seeing the human mind not as an
entity or a thing but corporeally, affectively and socially situated action. In
order to understand such action, it is
necessary to study relevant socio-cultural
contexts where the corporeal, affective and social human mind is at work.
The lecture asks: If human realities are
not seen as “essences” or fixed entities but as processes, how to rethink the
knower, the known and their relations. What does it mean that the knower is
always already part of the field s/he studies? How to know oneself as an
engaged producer of knowledge? How does one’s own social and cultural position
influence the way one approaches
one’s research subjects? How do the
academic institutions one is a part of influence approaches? For what purposes
and to whom do we produce knowledge?
