Topos

* * * — 2025-07-14

RETHINKING THE CONTOURS OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL THEORY BY VLADIMIR FOURS

Veranika Furs — 2025-07-14

This article serves as an extended editorial introduction to the special issue of Topos journal, marking the 15th anniversary of the passing of the influential Belarusian philosopher Vladimir Fours (1963—2009). It aims to critically revisit and contextualize Fours’s contribution to contemporary critical social theory within the framework of current global and regional transformations, particularly in Belarus and Central-Eastern Europe. The authors reconstruct key stages of Fours’s intellectual evolution and emphasize the lasting relevance of his work. Alongside a reconstruction of Fours’s intellectual trajectory and the reception of his ideas, the article provides an overview of contemporary developments in critical theory, including the rise of digital capitalism, ecological crisis, the transformation of the public sphere, and the emergence of new epistemic frameworks such as postcolonial theory, feminist critique, and critical AI theory. The authors argue that Fours’s conceptualization of critical theory as a reflexive, ethically grounded, and socially engaged project remains crucial today. His legacy offers valuable tools for analyzing the challenges of the present and for imagining alternative futures rooted in critical thought and emancipatory praxis. The article also highlights the commemorative and scholarly efforts surrounding the 2024 conference “Contours of Contemporary Critical Theory” and explores the role of Fours’s legacy in fostering new directions for interdisciplinary research, public engagement, and critical dialogue in the post-Soviet intellectual landscape.

FROM NON-CLASSICAL TYPES OF RATIONALITY TO CRITICAL THEORY: V. FOURS

Gintautas Mažeikis — 2025-07-14

In order to interpret the philosophical path of Vladimir Fours, it is first necessary to demonstrate how late Soviet philosophy first allowed and then Lukashenko’s regime prohibited the emergence of a plurality of rationalities and a diversity of symbolic worlds. This will help to understand Fours’s resistance to this prohibition. Furthermore, it is important to consider what the plurality of rationalities means from the point of view of critical theory. The interpretation of this plurality as constructive can be seen as conducive to the modernization of society and the development of human consciousness. Conversely, it can also be viewed as pathological and destructive. The article provides an interpretation of Fours’s theoretical thought process, progressing from the theory of rationalities to the analysis of communicative acts and their pathologies, as outlined in J. Habermas’ discourse ethics. It then moves on to E. Laclau and Ch. Mouffe’s theory of agonistic ruptures, S. Žižek’s concept of hidden prohibitions and C. Castoriadis’s empowering imagination. The article also presents the contemporary results and the challenges encountered during this critical reflection.

GENEALOGICAL CRITIQUE OF SOCIAL PRACTICES: NIETZSCHE AND FOUCAULT VERSUS HABERMAS

Arūnas Mickevičius — 2025-07-14

Abstract: This article aims to elucidate Michel Foucault’s interpretive engagement with key concepts in Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, to demonstrate their significance for the development of Foucault’s genealogical method, and to examine how, particularly in his polemic with Jürgen Habermas, genealogy becomes a question of the legitimacy of critique — namely, how critical interrogation of social practices remains possible. The central thesis is that Foucault’s genealogy, shaped through a selective appropriation of Nietzschean insights and positioned as an alternative to Habermas’s theory of communicative action, should not be understood as a search for universally valid normative structures. Rather, it constitutes a historically grounded framework for understanding subjectivity and social practices, enabling us to think and act differently, and thereby contributing to the ongoing task of freedom. The article argues that Foucault, instrumentally relying on Nietzsche, developed genealogical hermeneutics as an interpretive practice that is oriented towards a critical understanding of social practices permeated by mechanisms of power. A key divergence from Nietzsche lies in Foucault’s de-psychologization of agency: whereas Nietzsche often grounds knowledge and morality in the subjective tactics of individuals, Foucault treats psychological motivation as an effect of impersonal power strategies without strategists. The article further contends that the core disagreement between Foucault and Habermas concerns the relation between power, truth, and subjectivity. Foucault reverses the traditional dependency: rather than power being conditioned by truth and the subject, it is truth and the subject that are constituted through power. He critiques Habermas’s model of ideal communication as ahistorical and utopian, arguing that no discourse is free from power. Consequently, critique should not aim to abolish power, but to engage it through legal norms, techniques of governance, and an ethos that minimizes domination.

NORMATIVITY IN CRITIQUE: HOW THE THEORY OF SUBJECTIVATION ADVANCES THE THEORY OF RECOGNITION

Ekaterina Shashlova — 2025-07-15

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the contemporary theories
on critique and normativity. By conceptualizing the tensions and convergences between critical and normative theory, contemporary scholars argue that critical theory is normative or at least possesses normative content. The focus is placed on the theory of recognition and the theory of
subjectivation. The paper asserts that the normative content of critical
theory — universal norms of justice — manifests as a critique of inequality
and injustice, a perspective prominently articulated in the contemporary theory of recognition developed by Axel Honneth, Franck Fischbach, and Emmanuel Renault. Both Axel Honneth and Judith Butler establish a closer link between Foucauldian critical theory and the objectives of the theory of recognition. Drawing on Foucault’s critique of subjugation, Butler highlights the connection between recognition and subjectivation, emphasizing the convergence of self-recognition and the constitution of the self as a subject. Thus, the theory of recognition, as a critical theory with normative content, finds its own foundations in Foucault’s critique of subjugation. In this context, the concept of subjectivation emerges as a central category in the further development of the theory of recognition.

Keywords: critique, subjection, subjectivation, normativity, reification, intersubjectivity, recognition, misrecognition.

IMPLOSIVE SOCIETIES: SCREENS, MATTER, AND LATERAL AGENCY

Ilia Inishev — 2025-07-15

Abstract. What we have been facing over the past decades may be described not in the worn-out terms of yet another ‘turn’ but rather as a fundamental change of vector: from outward-directed expansion to inward-directed compression — or, more precisely, to productive differentiation. This shift represents a dialectical reversal within expansionist dynamics themselves, encompassing both human experiences and material milieus and tending to merge them into a new kind of concretion with distinct characteristics.
Among these characteristics are the intensified presence of screen-like surfaces that predominantly surround us; the laterality of experiences, which are increasingly susceptible to distributed or dispersed forms of presence as opposed to aggressivity-laden frontal (re)actions; and a form of meaningfulness that resists accommodation within symbolic structures. Taken together, these tendencies mark a broader transformation in material-social dynamics — one that paradoxically accelerates the imaginative realm, now situated beyond the long-standing divide between inner and outer worlds. Such an imaginatively accelerated society may be described as implosive — a term I use in a sense close to that found in the programmatic work of Marshall McLuhan. In this context, implosion is understood as a productive process of technological and perceptual differentiation, involving the composition and decomposition of matter and resulting in the blurring of established boundaries between the given, the meaningful, and the perceptible. In this article, I examine the origins, underlying conditions, and political as well as social-theoretical implications of the emergent implosive societal.

UNDERDETERMINED PRAXIS AND POLYCRISIS OF MODERNITY

Siarhei Liubimau — 2025-07-15

Abstract: This paper develops a version of critical theory as determination of praxis, where praxis is defined as a change made via intellectual activity of understanding and explanation. It uses the commemoration of 15 years from the death of Belarusian social philosopher Vladimir Fours to reflect on the transformations of social theory in the 1980s–2020s. It approaches Vladimir Fours as a constructivist social philosopher of emancipation and as a contributor to conceptualizations of late modernity’s disorganization. This paper highlights that the spread of constructivist social research very much coincided historically with the momentum of neoliberal doctrine worldwide and with tangible underlying strategies to undergird and reinforce neoliberal doctrine. The lack of recognition of these underlying strategies behind the constructivism-emancipation nexus has resulted in often disembedded agency and underdetermined praxis of the mainstream social theory. This becomes especially apparent in light of the currently encountered polycrisis of modernity, defined in this paper as fusion of the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath — namely, the growing
incommensurability between global finance and national politics; the rise of digital platforms — as business models, new power agents, and critical scaffoldings of everyday experience (contributing to the erosion of gridlike modern statehoods); growing momentum in the recognition of climate crisis as a critical issue (revealing the limits to laissez-faire market logic); and Russia’s challenge to the post-WWII political order (strategically undermining the principle of the right of nations to self-determination by a permanent member of the UN Security Council). This paper presents a showcase of developing configurations of embedded agency and of determined praxis aimed at adequately confronting the polycrisis of modernity, along with its prevailing tendencies of neoliberalization and militarization. From this perspective, it advocates for a stronger emphasis on an infrastructural lens versus a constructivist turn, personal data versus
identity, critique of extractivism versus decolonization, and planetarity versus globalization.

УЛАДЗІМЕР ФУРС ЯК МЫСЬЛЯР ПАЛІТЫЧНАГА

Uładzislaŭ Ivanoŭ — 2025-07-15

Abstract: The foundations of deliberative democracy rest on ideals of communicative rationality, as articulated by Jürgen Habermas, a key representative of the Frankfurt School’s second generation. Emerging from critical theory’s broader critique of instrumental rationality, deliberative democracy emphasizes public discourse and consensus as essential mechanisms for legitimate governance. This model assumes that through discourse ethics, diverse societal interests can converge toward norms, transcending partial biases. However, in times of uncertainty — particularly during war or social upheaval — these assumptions face significant challenges. The historical context of the Frankfurt School’s development underscores this point. Established amidst the European crises of the early 20th century, critical theorists like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer grappled with the failures of rationality that led to totalitarianism. The critique of deliberative democracy in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war highlights the need to reassess the theory’s practical and ethical foundations. While deliberative democracy aspires to foster inclusivity and legitimacy through rational discourse, its application during periods of profound uncertainty exposes critical vulnerabilities. These include the challenges of relativism, asymmetrical power dynamics, and the ethical risks of procedural neutrality. The aim of this study is to probe the practical applicability and evaluate the core epistemological and ethical assumptions of deliberative democracy, particularly its Habermasian formulations, when confronted with conditions of uncertainty. It critically examines the theoretical underpinnings of deliberative democracy, its limitations, and the ethical dilemmas posed by its procedural inclusivity. Methodological approach taken in this article builds upon case study to illustrate the limitations of deliberative democracy, and draws on critical theory — especially those of Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas — to evaluate its epistemological and ethical assumptions.

THE METHODOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS OF DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY IN TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY

Daria Synhaievska — 2025-07-15

The foundations of deliberative democracy rest on ideals of communicative rationality, as articulated by Jürgen Habermas, a key representative of the Frankfurt School’s second generation. Emerging from critical theory’s broader critique of instrumental rationality, deliberative democracy emphasizes public discourse and consensus as essential mechanisms for legitimate governance. This model assumes that through discourse ethics, diverse societal interests can converge toward norms, transcending partial biases. However, in times of uncertainty — particularly during war or social upheaval — these assumptions face significant challenges. The historical context of the Frankfurt School’s development underscores this point. Established amidst the European crises of the early 20th century, critical theorists like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer grappled with the failures of rationality that led to totalitarianism. The critique of deliberative democracy in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war highlights the need to reassess the theory’s practical and ethical foundations. While deliberative democracy aspires to foster inclusivity and legitimacy through rational discourse, its application during periods of profound uncertainty exposes critical vulnerabilities. These include the challenges of relativism, asymmetrical power dynamics, and the ethical risks of procedural neutrality. The aim of this study is to probe the practical applicability and evaluate the core epistemological and ethical assumptions of deliberative democracy, particularly its Habermasian formulations, when confronted with conditions of uncertainty. It critically examines the theoretical underpinnings of deliberative democracy, its limitations, and the ethical dilemmas posed by its procedural inclusivity. Methodological approach taken in this article builds upon case study to illustrate the limitations of deliberative democracy, and draws on critical theory — especially those of Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas — to evaluate its epistemological and ethical assumptions.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH PARTICIPATORY CULTURE?

Veranika Furs — 2025-07-15

The article proposes a systematization of perspectives on participatory culture. The relevance of this research lies in critically examining both the phenomenon of participatory culture itself and its potential for shaping what is commonly referred to as “participatory democracy”. The first section explores key concepts such as collective intelligence, convergent culture, participatory culture, prosumption, and produsage, accumulating positive perspectives on participatory culture. The second section analyzes the creative activity of grassroots communities through the lens of Foucault’s microphysics of power and the political-economic critique of digital capitalism, providing some critical perspectives on participation and participatory culture. The analysis of both positive and critical perspectives allows to come to conclusion that participatory culture, as Jenkins envisioned it by studying fan communities, has little in common with participatory democracy for several reasons: (1) Fan communities demonstrate a new form of escapism, directing the creative energy of their members toward immersion in the imaginary worlds of popular culture, exploring and expanding these worlds rather than addressing real social issues. (2) Modern digital culture initiates a symbiosis of humans and technologies, creating a socio-technological ecosystem in which the creative activity of prosumers, if not fully subordinated, is at least significantly dependent on software design. (3) Social media are colonized by corporations for which prosumers are a source of surplus value; therefore, speaking of the participatory nature of social networks consciously or unconsciously supports the ideology of capital.

THE PROBLEMATIC OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) IN COGNITIVE CAPITALISM: TOWARD POSTHUMANIST CONTOURS OF THE NEW COGNITARIAT

Denis Petrina — 2025-07-15

This paper examines the problematic of artificial intelligence (AI) through the lens of contemporary critical theory, offering a dual analytical perspective. On the one hand, AI is explored as a symptom of cognitive capitalism, which operates through its key mechanisms, such as modulation, control, and the generation of informational surplus value. On the other hand, the paper raises the issue of exploiting hybrid human-machine labor, emphasizing the need to transcend anthropocentric models and reconceptualize solidarity in a posthumanist framework. In the first section, AI is analyzed as a form of Marx’s general intellect, understood as the collective intellectual and technical capacities of society. It argues that in the context of cognitive capitalism, AI systems play a central role in modulation and adaptive control, acting as pivotal agents in the production of machinic knowledge and the valorization of information. The second section introduces the concept of the cognitariat as a new class existing within the conditions of hybrid technogenesis, defined by the parallel co-evolution of humans and machines. The paper traces changes in the dynamics of cognitive labor through the concepts of performativity and transindividuality, as it evolves in the age of AI into a hybrid form that integrates transhumanist, posthumanist, and neomaterialist dimensions. Ultimately, the paper underscores the necessity of radically rethinking cognition in material terms to address its reification and exploitation. As a conceptual alternative to the individualistic and hyperrational epistemes of capitalism, the idea of entanglement is proposed as a mis-en-scene for solidarity and collective agency within the hybrid cognitive ecology of humans and machines.

GENERATIVE MEDIA AND THEIR SUBJECT IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF CRITICAL THEORY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

Viktoriya Kanstantsiuk — 2025-07-15

This article explores how generative media and artificial intelligence reshape subjectivity, perception, and communication in the (post) digital age. Drawing on critical theory and psychoanalysis — particularly the works of Mark Andrejevic, Slavoj Žižek, Bernard Stiegler, John Black, and others — the article analyzes how algorithmically-driven media affect the dynamics of desire, knowledge, and autonomy. Special attention is given to the dialectic between subjectivity and algorithmic regulation, the psychoanalytic concept of the “desire not to know,” and the transformation of creativity under conditions of automated content production. The discussion uncovers the ideological functions of generative media, showing how AI does not merely mediate perception but actively participates in the structuring of the unconscious. Tracing the historical evolution of media as both technological and symbolic systems, the article argues for a critical re-evaluation of the socio-political and epistemological implications of AI-generated content. Ultimately, it challenges the presumed neutrality of generative technologies, foregrounding their role in the reproduction of power, desire, and subject formation.

CYBERFEMINISM AND THE BELARUSIAN UPRISING: DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURES, AFFECTIVE SOLIDARITY, AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION

Volha Davydzik — 2025-07-15

The following article explores how information technologies can function as infrastructures of resistance and collective world-making in the face of socio-political catastrophe, authoritarian suppression, and covert control systems. Focusing on the 2020–2021 Belarusian protests, it examines how digital environments became critical for reconfiguring political agency and collective solidarity. While often associated with surveillance and extraction, digital infrastructures also serve as platforms for alternative, decentralized modes of resistance. Revisited through a cyberfeminist lens, the Belarusian case reveals how feminist strategies intersect with digital tools to generate subversive forms of care, visibility, and political engagement. The entry point to the reimagining of digital technologies as a space for producing solidarity is Donna Haraway’s framing of agency as sympoetic and open-ended, thus revealing itself in bundles of networks and entanglements. Agency appears to be distributed amongst human and non-human (or more-than-human) participants in assemblies who co-constitute each other in the process of world-making or world-becoming. Hence, emerging infrastructures are never neutral and merely instrumental, but relational and affective as they are a product of daily interaction (or intra-action) and become a site of intersection of acts, desires, emotions, histories, bodies and technologies. In the course of Belarusian uprisings, digital space became one of those sites of distributed collective agency in-becoming through experimentation, creativity, openness, thinking and telling stories together. This analysis foregrounds the hybrid entanglements of technology, gender, and resistance, mapping how cyberfeminism offers theoretical and practical pathways for technopolitical transformation and emancipation.

CRITICALLY ONTOLOGIZING THE NATION: ULADZIMIR KARATKIEVICH’S ZYAMLYA PAD BYELYMI KRYLAMI

Jakob Wunderwald — 2025-07-15

Uladzimir Karatkievich’s long essay Zyamlya pad byelymi krylami (1972/1977) tries to teach its readers about the Belarusian nation. In the following, it shall be posited that this teaching can best be understood as enacting critical ontologization — a mode of developing potential for critical thinking out of identifying oneself with the essence of a national past. This concept is taken from a reading of Frantz Fanon’s idea of a national culture as formulated in The Wretched of the Earth (1961). Here, Fanon envisions a mode of locating oneself within a national history that opens up critical potential in the present — it is the core postulate of this text that Zyamlya pad byelymi krylami follows a similar model. The main part of the article will make this argument productive; in a close reading of Karatkievich’s essay, several of the key aspects of the text will be discussed in this context: the relation established between the text’s narrator and his listeners, the way in which the text positions Belarus as all-encompassing, and the way in which such a positioning opens up critical possibilities for interrogating the relationship between Belarus and its place in Soviet discourse. The aim of such an operation is to demonstrate how in Zyamlya pad byelymi krylami two apparently contradictory tendencies become the same: an authoritarian way of national writing that identifies a national essence within its reader — and a critical impetus to empower the reader to break his present and create something new.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CIVIC AND ETHNIC NATIONALISM ACCORDING TO ULADZIMIR FOURS, AND INSTITUTIONS FOR ENFORCING LANGUAGE RIGHTS AS THEIR POINT OF CONVERGENCE

Dzianis Tyshinsky — 2025-07-14

The paper critically examines Uladzimir Fours’s approach to the relationship between civic and ethnic nationalism. As an illustration of their interplay, it highlights public institutions responsible for the protection of language rights and the implementation of language policy. The article references Belarusian initiatives aimed at institutionalizing the defense of linguistic rights — such as the proposed but ultimately unrealized Belarusian state department for language affairs. As practical examples, it discusses public bodies that uphold linguistic rights in post-colonial countries and territories formerly under British rule. These include the Ministry of National Co-existence, Dialogue, and Official Languages of Sri Lanka; language commissioners of Canada, the Republic of Ireland, and Wales; and the Scottish Gaelic Board, among others. The paper emphasizes how such institutions contribute to civic autonomy, which Fours identifies as a key component of nationalism. Activities that promote this autonomy include assisting individuals in defending their linguistic rights, supporting institutions in developing language schemes, and fostering public dialogue.

CONTOURS OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL THEORY

Topos Topos — 2025-07-15