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Preliminary communication

https://doi.org/10.21464/sp35104

“Do It Like Your Demon Obliges You To Do!”. The Illusionistic Worldview of Oskar Panizza and Its Aporias

Damir Smiljanić orcid id orcid.org/0000-0002-5791-620X ; Universität Novi Sad, Philosophische Fakultät, Dr Zorana Đinđića 2, RS–21000 Novi Sad


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Abstract

The article is dealing with the turbulent life of German writer, essayist and satirist Oskar Panizza (1853–1921), also with his attacks against the law and authorities, because of which he was sentenced to one-year imprisonment. Balancing on the boundary line between reality and illusion, ingeniousness and insanity, this charismatic author spent a life full of contradictions: he began to work as a neurologist, but shortly afterwards he became a writer – finally, he ended his life odyssey as a patient in a sanatorium. Following the ideas of Max Stirner, Panizza subscribed to illusionism as a valid weltanschauung: hallucination is real, the reality is chimerical. The article aims to show that we do not have a case of a mentally disordered person, instead, of an author who was questioning the boundaries between normality and abnormality, anticipating the subsequent criticism of normative assumptions of the institutionalized psychiatry.

Keywords

Oskar Panizza; illusionism; demonism; individualism; genius; madness; Psichopatia criminalis

Hrčak ID:

246294

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/246294

Publication date:

24.9.2020.

Article data in other languages: croatian french german

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