'IVONA PRINCESS OF BURGUNDIA' AND 'HISTORY' OR CULTURAL DISCOURSE ARROGANCE ('Iwona, ksiezniczka Burgunda' i 'Historia', czyli o arogancji kulturowego dyskursu)

The author uses the methodological tools as gender studies, queer theory, psychoanalysis, and post-structuralism (J. Butler, J. Kristeva, R. Barthes) to interpret Witold Gombrowicz's two dramas. In this view, 'Ivona Princess of Burgundia' and 'History' prove to be the cultural distance analysis presented in the dramatic form which reveals its plight, normativeness, and identity claims. The dramatist puts on the social processes of identity creation which stem from a series of exclusions of what is regarded as standing out of norm. Gombrowicz nonetheless is not confined to show that the sex, generally seen as something primal, innate and invariable, is a mere cultural construct and discursive form. Rather, he suggests a possibility of subversive conversion of identity forms and alternative forms of self-creation and experience.