The Countertextual Peripeteias of the Contemporary Humanities as a Political Challenge
The Countertextual Peripeteias of the Contemporary Humanities as a Political Challenge

Summary/Abstract: The article seeks to provide a philosophical recognition of the sense of changes that have been taking place in the contemporary humanities for several decades, as well as their political and institutional consequences. The analysis focuses not on just any turns in the humanities, but only those that directly or indirectly question the primacy of writing and literacy as crucial means of opening access to the understanding of what the human being is. In the first part, I discuss the philosophical meaning of the metacategories of “turn” and “return” in the contemporary humanities. In the second part, I present briefly a few turns that question the traditional sense of the humanities understood as studia humaniora. In addition to the oral turn, I take into account the rhetorical, performative, memory, ludic, somatic, media, affective and post-colonial turns. While I do not present them in great detail, I try to capture a certain tendency and highlight what they have in common. In the last part, I look into the institutional consequences that call into question the primacy of writings in the humanities. I pose a question about the university and try to respond, referring somewhat arbitrarily to the Turner’s concept of a communitas.

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