At the time when French poststructuralist philosophers declared the end of man and the demise of the subject (Derrida, Foucault), human agency made an unexpected and troubling return in the form of the Anthropocene. It has become evident that we are not only agents but also the culprits behind a profound disruption of the ecosystem, jeopardizing not only ourselves but also the future of all life on Earth as we know it.

It seems logical that countering the somber results of our collective actions would necessitate a global collective effort on the same scale as climate change operates. However, ironically, the death of the subject has not led to a reevaluation of the common but rather to an incredible proliferation of identities that complicates the construction of any common and universal platform for global action. As if that weren't enough, universalism has also been discredited as a postcolonial legacy of Western phallogocentrism – a tool of domination employed by exclusively male agents of colonial empires to discredit and erase the cultural traditions of the subalterns. The connection between universalism and the equally criticized Enlightenment exacerbates the matter.

Thus, the universal appears to be both desperately needed and impossible simultaneously. Is there any room for it in contemporary politics? Can we reconstruct universalism without reverting to the rightly discredited pattern of European colonial domination? In his lecture, Jan Sowa will attempt to outline a potential solution to this conundrum, indicating a path toward defining a new universalism based on speculative realism, new materialisms, and critical conceptualizations of class divisions in contemporary capitalism.

At the time when French poststructuralist philosophers declared the end of man and the demise of the subject (Derrida, Foucault), human agency made an unexpected and troubling return in the form of the Anthropocene. It has become evident that we are not only agents but also the culprits behind a profound disruption of the ecosystem, jeopardizing not only ourselves but also the future of all life on Earth as we know it.

It seems logical that countering the somber results of our collective actions would necessitate a global collective effort on the same scale as climate change operates. However, ironically, the death of the subject has not led to a reevaluation of the common but rather to an incredible proliferation of identities that complicates the construction of any common and universal platform for global action. As if that weren't enough, universalism has also been discredited as a postcolonial legacy of Western phallogocentrism – a tool of domination employed by exclusively male agents of colonial empires to discredit and erase the cultural traditions of the subalterns. The connection between universalism and the equally criticized Enlightenment exacerbates the matter.

Thus, the universal appears to be both desperately needed and impossible simultaneously. Is there any room for it in contemporary politics? Can we reconstruct universalism without reverting to the rightly discredited pattern of European colonial domination? In his lecture, Jan Sowa will attempt to outline a potential solution to this conundrum, indicating a path toward defining a new universalism based on speculative realism, new materialisms, and critical conceptualizations of class divisions in contemporary capitalism.