Nieograniczone graniczenie : o Witolda Gombrowicza zmaganiach z chaosem

Abstract

The starting point for this paper is the observation – familiar to contemporary culture and made also by Witold Gombrowicz – that the warrants of sense behind great narratives no longer hold and that the position of Father in discourse remains unfilled, resulting in disintegration of the current model of subjectivity. The author investigates the ways in which Gombrowicz proposes to deal with the resulting chaos and indefiniteness. In order to discuss his strategy, the paper introduces the notion of “unlimited delimitation”, which refers to attempts to form new subjectivity not on the basis of schematic and fossilised positions or their complementary transgression, but on the basis of continual, active, agonic resistance to natural and cultural limitations – resistance motivated solely by the will. This strategy throws a challenge to the other and at the same time summons the other to respond, since it stands a chance to be effective only if it becomes universal. At this point Gombrowicz’s thought structurally corresponds with the ideas of Alain Badiou, who analyses St. Paul’s universalism, an observation important for the present discussion, as it opens the possibility of a post-secular reading of Gombrowicz’s writings.