Thinking and Acting Intertwined. The French Variant of the Philosophy of Praxis and Contemporary Dilemmas of Cultural Studies

Abstract

There has recently been an intense discussion in cultural studies and humanities on the need to revise strong and dominant constructivist or textualist paradigm in cultural theory. This discussion takes place under different names: the material turn, speculative realism, postantropocentric humanities or the „New French Philosophy”, which is thought to be an answer to the radical constructivist attitude of poststructuralism or to the so-called French Theory. The aim of this article is, however, to recall the fact that French poststructuralism never constituted a homogeneous trend and that some of the demands of the „new humanities” were successfully met in the framework of this philosophy, for example in the French variant of the philosophy of praxis, initiated in Althusser’s school, but developed fully by Pierre Bourdieu or Michel de Certeau. Furthermore, the „practical philosophy”, inspired by Marxist epistemology as well as by the ideas of the late Wittgenstein and pragma linguistics, was discussed in great detail in the Polish cultural theory, for example in the Poznan school of epistemology. Accordingly, I would like to point out in this text that, first of all, there is a need to develop an adequate and useful concept of practice applicable in current cultural research. Inspired by this tradition in the French philosophy, the concept could be reconciled with the demands of the return to the „rough ground” of cultural reality.