An attempt has been made to present “continuity” which, despite artists’ denials, is a prerequisite for the creation of novelty. Subsequent movements and styles (trends today) in architecture have tried to deny the ideas and forms of their predecessors. Avant-garde art distances itself from any continuation. The original does not exist even in the modern world, let alone in post-modernity. The world is filled with shapes, colours and images of the past, unable to liberate itself from it. The artists are left with a false impression of their genius and originality. Looking at the buildings built today, one can discern the unbuilt architecture of the early twentieth century. This is by no means the accusation of lack of originality, but rather the realisation of a harsh fact that it is impossible to create complete novelty. It might have been easier for our predecessors without access to the Internet and the World Library of Imagination.

In the extensive polemic with the book Haunting History: For a Deconstructive Approach to the Past by Ethan Kleinberg, the reviewer comments on the innovative potential of deconstruction as it enables the conception of various scenarios of the future. Kleinberg’s reflections on the ontology (or hauntology) of the past are located within the current discussion about “the ontological turn.” The reviewer compares Kleinberg’s take on a deconstructive approach to the past with similar considerations presented by Sande Cohen in the US as well as by Keith Jenkins, Alun Munslow and, more recently, Berber Bevernage in Europe.

This article is a review of Ethan Kleinberg’s Haunting History. For a Deconstructive Approach to the Past (Stanford, 2017). I focus on three issues related to that work. These are: historians’ attitude towards the deconstruction; the idea of ontological realism and its critique; the role of young historians in modern academia. This text is based not only on the book reviewed but also on its different analyses and ways it was used in other research. In the conclusion, I present how Haunting History can be used as an emancipatory tool by scholars who are starting their academic careers now.

The issue of unconsciousness, correlated with the topic of a human’s sexual life, is one of the most significant philosophical trends in Nikolai Berdyaev. Focusing on this issue, the Russian thinker perceives the ambiguous assessment of psychoanalysis as the groundbreaking phenomenon of his times. Berdyaev’s attitude towards Sigmund Freud’s and Carl G. Jung’s theories oscillates between approval and negation, and is shaped on the plane of ontological deconstruction. According to Berdyaev, psychoanalysis allows people to realize the presence of gender energy as well as indicates the need for sublimation. However, the transformation of sex drive into the source of production is not possible without the spiritual principle – something that is not taken into consideration in psychoanalysis, which is, as Berdyaev claims, its greatest weakness.

This article contains an analysis of a short passage about Don Quixote from Michel Serres’ philosophical dialogue entitled La Légende des Anges. He claims that the generally accepted view of the relationship between Don Quixote and Sancho Pansa as a binary, hierarchical pairing is an illusion. In fact, Cervantes deconstructs the familiar opposi-tions of the carer and his subordinate in need of care, the rational thinker and the dreamer, the main character and his associate. As the two protagonists continually ex-change their roles, theirs is a story of creating and upholding new kind of bond. In describing the relationship between Don Quixote and Sancho Pansa, Serres alludes to the figure of the parasite (from his 1980 book Le Parasite), i.e. a third party or position, an (invisible) go-between or middle ground that makes the relationship possible but also messes things up. Serres acknowledges the dynamics of this configuration on the formal level and makes it the structural axis of his text, which is just a piece of dialogue between a nurse and an air traffic controller. Their interaction seems to be fully inscribed in the binary model, yet, he insists, there is more to it. This may well be the case with the pair of characters in Cervantes’ novel.

The aim of this article is a critical revision of the dominant philosophical conceptualization of plants. The author deconstructs the tradition of describing plants in metaphysical and anthropocentric categories by deploying a set of tropes and strategies from the toolkit of deconstruction and phenomenology. While considering the 'plant-being', he formulates an alternative concept of 'plant-thinking', whose distinctive features are non-identity, voicelessness, non-essentionality and existence outside any symbol system. Conceptualized in these categories the plant not only defies the received discourse of metaphysics but also becomes a stepping stone and a most important figure of post-metaphysical thought.

This is a deconstructive reading of Juliusz Słowacki's Lilla Weneda, focusing on Ślaz, an enigmatic character usually marginalized in interpretations of this quasi-historical Romantic drama. Drawing on Professor Marta Piwińska's study of ‘Lilla Weneda’ in Dramat polski: Interpretacje (2001), this article explores the gaps and fissures in Słowacki's text. While complementing her analysis with a number of alternative readings, this article also uses deconstruction to challenge some of the points that are embedded in the traditional reception of the drama.