Deeds without Doers

• In Event: Revolutionary Life beyond the State

Abstract

This talk presents the findings of a close-reading of the ideas of humanity, automation, and revolution in Witkacy’s last play, The Shoemakers (1934). It analyzes what Witkacy does with the idea of revolution and its suppositions by employing the concepts of subjective and objective alienations and puts them in conversation with Witkacy’s radical idea of the human. It argues that over the course of the revolutions a counter-dynamic emerges in which the two alienations decouple and make for a chiastic reversal of alienation and (Witkacian) humanity. It further examines the new, uncanny ontological and linguistic beings that inhabit this continuing horizon of automated revolutions sans humanity, arguing that play ultimately has a layering of language – and that it is here that a modicum of subjectivity can be found.

Author

• Alexander Lindskog, U of Chicago