On the Margins of Experience: Rubbish in the Works of Miron Białoszewski and Tadeusz Różewicz

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2017-03

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Abstract

Placeholder Text - Focusing on the philosophical dimension of these works, I argue that they express two epistemological models of the relationship between human cognitive practices and an objective reality. This relationship is discussed in my dissertation in terms of the link between the conceptual and the extra-conceptual, and it is developed in the texts of the two authors in the context of but also as a response to a constructivist understanding of human cognition. I argue that by linking the conceptual and the extra-conceptual, the models offered by Białoszewski and Różewicz seek to escape the confines of epistemological constructivism. The key element in these attempts is the notion of rubbish. Understood as a cognitive category and used as a metaphor for all unassimilable elements that disrupt the pattern-making tendencies of human cognition, rubbish, I argue, simultaneously subverts and maintains the stability of the conceptual order into which it does not fit. This double nature of rubbish links the conceptual and the extra-conceptual in the epistemological models presented in Białoszewski’s and Różewicz’s texts. My study demonstrates that although Białoszewski’s and Różewicz’s models exemplify contemporary antirealist tendencies in philosophy, the contributions of these two authors to the philosophical debate concerning the limits of human cognition do not consist solely in rejecting a traditionally understood realism. Rather, they offer reassessments of the antirealist framework and propose a uniquely non-essentialist understanding of the world.

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antirealism, epistemology, Różewicz, Tadeusz, Polish literature, realism, Białoszewski, Miron

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