Posthumanity and Non-Knowledge in S. I. Witkiewicz’s Late Work

• In Event: Memory and Non-Memory in Polish 20th Century Literature

Abstract

This paper looks at strategies of conserving humanity in S. I. Witkiewicz’s (1885-1939) final works, the play The Shoemakers (1934) and his essays Narcotics (1932) and Unwashed Souls (1936). Witkiewicz’s radical aesthetics of Pure Form was always tied in with a “catastrophist” worldview that not only prophesied but assumed an imminent end to humanity. Citing the end of humanity (that humans were no longer driven by non-knowledge that demands an answer in art or philosophy), the artist gradually gave up on his project of Pure Form in the mid-1920’s, with the exception of The Shoemakers. This paper uses concepts from Maurice Blanchot and Martin Heidegger to discuss Witkiewicz’s aesthetic and philosophical strategies for maintaining non-knowledge in this final phase of his oeuvre.

Author

• Alexander Lindskog, U of Chicago