“The Palanka Philosophy”: Selected Excerpts Cover Image

“The Palanka Philosophy”: Selected Excerpts
“The Palanka Philosophy”: Selected Excerpts

Author(s): Radomir Konstantinović
Subject(s): Philosophy
Published by: Wittenberg University - Sociology Department

Summary/Abstract: Our experience is the experience of provincialism. 1 At times, it is dangerous (even punishable) to disclose such statements to provincial arrogance. At other times, however, the word palanka explores the concept of destiny: it is said that palanka is our destiny, our evil doom. There are no changes, and there can be none. History has forgotten us, as if greatly engrossed in other matters. Thus forgotten, the world of palanka is neither a city nor a village: it is something in between. Nonetheless, its spirit is the spirit that floats between the tribal spirit, as ideal-unique, and world spirit, as ideal-open. When the spirit of the palanka speaks of its evil doom, it in fact speaks of its exclusion from history. But even when that spirit displays the selfsame exclusion as a curse, it actually desires that exclusion. The foremost assumption of the palanka spirit lies precisely in that exclusion: cast off by history, it is a spirit which attempts to transform this accursed doom into its privilege. It will achieve that by a self-casting-off of this very history (as if fighting fire with fire): in this state of oblivion, it will remain in its devout commitment to duration, on the other side of time. Time itself is on the other side of the mountain: it is where the world chaos, or the chaos of an absolute-open world begins. [p. 19]

  • Issue Year: 9/2014
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 1-4
  • Page Count: 4
  • Language: English