This article takes a look at Ryszard Nycz’s new, groundbreaking study of cultural theory, pointedly titled Culture as Verb. It focuses on the author’s two major claims which seem to provide a foundation for the whole project. One is a vigorous defence of the humanities, the other is the proposition that culture may be best understood as a verb. The latter provokes a number of questions, especially about the role of invention, a dominant factor in any action-oriented model of culture. For example, would invention control and drive the mechanism of semantic ordering and appropriation of the things that used to be nameless, ignored, or suppressed? Is that domination culturally determined, or merely conditioned? Is it a source of suffering? It would also be interesting to find out more about the Nycz’s idea of transition from passive participation to the culture of active participation. The question is: Are we doomed to take part? As an aside, the author of this essay draws our attention to the darker side of being permanently involved in other people lives, the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) anxiety, and a new narcissism.

This contribution to the critical discussion of Ryszard Nycz’s Culture as Verb draws on his use of the parts-of-speech model to submit another formula of conceptualizing culture, based on the adverb, and complementary to the already existing approaches. They can be divided into three classes: those that treat culture as adjective (i.e. all epiphenomenal interpretations which view culture as a set of attributes), those that treat it as noun (i.e. an object, a separate academic discipline), and those that focus on action and the processual nature of culture (hence culture as verb), and even – in association with pragmatist and performative theories of language and the more recent ‘Activist Turn’ in the social sciences – have come to regard culture as culture-in-the-making, constituted and sustained by action (activities, performances). Most important for the adverbial approach are the modalities of culture, manifested in a variety of life styles. The study of culture as adverb (‘how’) can be pursued independently of the trench wars of cultural determinists and functionalists. Responding directly to Culture as Verb, qualifi ed as, chiefl y, an epistemological study, the article calls for a closer examination of the ontological implications of Nycz’s project of reinventing the humanities.