Autodestrukcja jako źródło przyjemności
Self-destruction as a source of pleasure

Author(s): Marek Kochan
Subject(s): Cultural history
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: self-destruction; violence; victim; The Piano Teacher by Jelinek; Crash by Cronenberg; Breaking the Waves by von Trier
Summary/Abstract: The topic of this essay is self-destructive behaviour analysed as way to become a subject of one’s life and feel pleasure. The author begins with discussing concepts of violence and power, recalling Simone Weil’s essay about "The Iliad" ("The Iliad or the Poem of Force") and the examples taken from literature about German-Nazi death camps (the short stories by Tadeusz Borowski and the novel of Jerzy Fąfara, devoted to the story of Józef Szajna, the prisoner of the Auschwitz camp). The individual, forced by violence to become a victim, could regain the status of sovereign subject and control over one’s life by using violence to himself or herself. The three faces of the phenomenon of self-destruction are discussed in the text: control, pleasure and offering. The author describes them with the reference to the novel of Elfriede Jelinek "The Piano Teacher" (control), the film "Crash" by David Cronenberg (pleasure) and the film "Breaking the Waves" by Lars von Trier (offering). The three concepts of self-destruction have a lot in common, as they lead to the same situation, when the individual regains sovereignty. As Martin Heidegger says ("Being and Time"), the death is something most private for human beings. Being-toward-death leads the individuals to recognize their own nature and to search different pleasures of life. Self-destruction could be one of them, sometimes bringing the pleasure and death at the same time.

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