Profanacje, rewizje – przeciw doktrynom. Dwa opowiadania z debiutanckiego tomu Witolda Gombrowicza
Profanations, Revisions — Against Doctrines. Two Stories from Witold Gombrowicz’s first book

Author(s): Marek Mikołajec
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Polish Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: Ferdydurke Authorship; Modernity and Ideology; Witold Gombrowicz's Stories; Critique of Ideology; Resistance and Revolt in; Literature;
Summary/Abstract: In his reflections the author ascribes works (stories) written by the authorof Ferdydurke to the artistic and ideological formation of modernity. Basing hisresearch on the reconstruction of issues that belong to this trend — that is onreflections put forward by Richard Sheppard and Pius X, the author of the bookmakes an attempt to manifest rules and characteristic features common to writersin that epoch, particularly the critique of all available ideas, the change thatmarked the perception of all then coherent and binding interpretations of thecurrent ideology as well as values. As far as the ideology is concerned, a turningpoint is expressed in two stories by Witold Gombrowicz, namely The Memoirs ofStefan 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 artistconfronting all attitudes, styles, ideologies unveiling at the same time their objectifyingmechanism.Part two depicts fragments from The Memoirs of Stefan Czarniecki in a criticalway. These fragments unveil references to biology, inheritance and eugenic hintsthat comprise the story. The chapter is an attempt to reconstruct and interpret ratlike,neutral subjectivity of the protagonist. Moreover, it provides semiotic contextand 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 hermeticarrangement of a ship. Social, philosophical, and psychoanalytical as wellas natural history motifs are extended in a systematic interpretation and plotanalysis of The Events on the Banbury. The book Profanations, Revisions — AgainstDoctrines is a collection of reflections on the potential of objection, resistance andrevolt as expressed in Gombrowicz’s language and by protagonists who deny andreject all possible drives that impose any doctrines on them. The subject undergoesa change the moment he opposes the condition imposed on him (ideologicalupbringing, gender stereotypes, school, military service, courts etc.) Primary inthese reflections is the function of constant exposing — to use Stefan Czarniecki’sphrase — the “mysteries” continuously taken at face value. The title of the bookand its contents seem to emphasize the fact that one has to ponder restlessly uponhuman subjectivity both in the world and in language.

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