Profanacje, rewizje - przeciw doktrynom : dwa opowiadania z debiutanckiego tomu Witolda Gombrowicza

Abstract

In his reflections the author ascribes works (stories) written by the author of Ferdydurke to the artistic and ideological formation of modernity. Basing his research on the reconstruction of issues that belong to this trend — that is on reflections put forward by Richard Sheppard and Pius X, the author of the book makes an attempt to manifest rules and characteristic features common to writers in that epoch, particularly the critique of all available ideas, the change that marked the perception of all then coherent and binding interpretations of the current ideology as well as values. As far as the ideology is concerned, a turning point is expressed in two stories by Witold Gombrowicz, namely The Memoirs of Stefan Czarniecki and The Events on the Banbury. Part one presents a series of associations with the Agamben profanations, a category of which is seen as active, dynamic move — a creation of the artist confronting all attitudes, styles, ideologies unveiling at the same time their objectifying mechanism. Part two depicts fragments from The Memoirs of Stefan Czarniecki in a critical way. These fragments unveil references to biology, inheritance and eugenic hints that comprise the story. The chapter is an attempt to reconstruct and interpret ratlike, neutral subjectivity of the protagonist. Moreover, it provides semiotic context and cultural figures of a rat in modernity and in contemporary times. Part three contains numerous examples of a critique typical to Gombrowicz. The critique concerns all possible discourses led as a part of an experiment, that is relations between a man and another man that took place in a hermetic arrangement of a ship. Social, philosophical, and psychoanalytical as well as natural history motifs are extended in a systematic interpretation and plot analysis of The Events on the Banbury. The book Profanations, Revisions — Against Doctrines is a collection of reflections on the potential of objection, resistance and revolt as expressed in Gombrowicz’s language and by protagonists who deny and reject all possible drives that impose any doctrines on them. The subject undergoes a change the moment he opposes the condition imposed on him (ideological upbringing, gender stereotypes, school, military service, courts etc.) Primary in these reflections is the function of constant exposing — to use Stefan Czarniecki’s phrase — the “mysteries” continuously taken at face value. The title of the book and its contents seem to emphasize the fact that one has to ponder restlessly upon human subjectivity both in the world and in language.