“Indomitable Boredom Above the Entire World”

According to Michał Markowski, in Gombrowicz’s writing boredom is not a phenomenon connected with the individual, nor is it a psychological phenomenon. Furthermore, if we accept that subjectivity is always relational because it is always established in reference to the world and the other, then boredom as a non-relational experience makes the constitution of subjectivity impossible because of the lack of any mediation. Based on “The Events on the Banbury” (Zdarzenia na brygu Banbury, 1932), Markowski demonstrates that understood ontologically, boredom makes it impossible to get beyond oneself, beyond the immediately experienced “I,” in the direction of the other, and, thus toward the social world.