The presented article reconstructs the literary polemic between the writer and essayist V. Mináč and the literary critic M. Hamada which took place in the liberal environment of the first half of the 1960s in Slovakia and became emblematic of that period of time. The author pays attention to its impact as well as the events and the writings preceding it. The central subject of the polemic was the category of the estrangement in the context of various interpretations of Marxist philosophy. It helps identify also the political and cultural processes forming the intellectual climate of the 1960s. On the one hand it became a part of the wide-ranging social discussion about the critical „acknowledgement“ of the Stalinism´s legacy, which continued until its violent interruption by Normalization after 1968, on the other hand, it made space for new ideological, philosophical and aesthetical initiatives. However, the polemic also raised the other issues, which have reached beyond the context of the period of time in question and are permanently present in the current discussions about finding alternatives to technological rationality and other strategies of the „Post-Modern“ power (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Bauman, Žižek).
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