Shame and lust in Witold Gombrowicz’s "Pornografia"
Karolina Sidowska
karolina.sidowska@uni.lodz.pla:1:{s:5:"en_US";s:20:"Uniwersytet Łódzki";} (Poland)
Abstract
The article explores the shame as an important interpretative approach for Gombrowicz's novel in the context of the philosophy of Georges Bataille and Jean-Paul Sartre. Beginning with the provocative title, through allusions and understatements, the author consistently appeals to the reader's imagination in order to construct potentially obscene content. The main characters, wanting to provoke an erotic act between two adolescents, allow themselves to be seduced by their youth. The fascination with immaturity as a bottom-up, ‘low’ value is a source of shameful pleasure: shame as a sense of violation of the prohibition and at the same time a signal of transgression is, due to Bataille, a key condition for the occurrence of pleasure. At the same time, shame appears in the novel as a basic existential experience, emerging through the awareness of being the object of the gaze of the Other, which constantly accompanies the protagonists - this theme situates Gombrowicz's work in the orbit of the philosophy of French existentialism.
Keywords:
Jean-Paul Sartre, Georges Bataille, Witold Gombrowicz, seduction, immaturity, transgressionReferences
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Authors
Karolina Sidowskakarolina.sidowska@uni.lodz.pl
a:1:{s:5:"en_US";s:20:"Uniwersytet Łódzki";} Poland
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