Gombrowicz the First Post-Colonialist?

The paper focuses on Witold Gombrowicz's interpretation of the postcolonial discourse that was taking shape during his years in Argentina. In the Diaries he unmasked the ideological foundations of this discourse. On the one hand, he criticized the very simplistic application by some of its participants of the doctrine of communism, which tends to attribute all evil in the world to Western capitalism, particularly practised by the United States, while on the other hand he voiced objections to the Latin American nativism and nationalism, both engendered, in his view, by an inferiority complex. An emphasis on the language of the body as an interpretational tool in defining the nature of the Latin American identity is a particularly valuable insight on Gombrowicz's part. Ultimately, he opposed the essence-oriented approach to the question of national character and suggested instead an interpersonalist and activist view which, despite traditional forms and stereotypes, emphasizes the need for continual personal and socially oriented self-recreation.