Onirično podrivanje stvarnosti - natprirodna strava i nihilizam Tomasa Ligotija

Abstract

Practically from its inception, Enlightenment ideal of rationality was equally criticized and fostered in European intellectual tradition. The belief in reason as an exclusive property of human mind capable of reproducing an authentic image of reality quickly revealed itself as highly disputable from standpoint of philosophy and art, as well as from angle of particular scientific disciplines (above all, psychology and anthropology). Within sphere of contemporary literature, one of greatest adversaries of Enlightenment idea of rationally apprehensible nature of reality horror fiction writer Thomas Ligotti. For this author, the world as it is has little or nothing to do with rational consciousness, and correlates more strongly with our deepest irrational fears which reveal themselves in feverish visions and nightmarish images. While establishing his personal and artistic worldview on inversion of usual ideas about reality, Ligotti creates a specific type of subversive prose: one that depraves world of any higher meaning and denies all possibilities of consolation to humankind. In this paper I pose question whether such disillusionment may leave any possibility for an individual to act independently, be it in a subversive or non-subversive sense of word.