Precepts and taboos play a central role in the systematization of Daoist communities. On this set of rules hinges the development of various Daoist movements and the establishment of different Daoist schools. In this article, I investigate the proscriptions about the five pungent vegetables (wuxin 五辛 or wuhun 五葷, allium vegetables) consumption in Daoist early medieval prescription’s texts. Whereas previous scholarship has analyzed the influence of Buddhism in Daoist monastic rules, this paper turns the attention to the way in which the five pungent vegetables taboo was elaborated in Daoist discourse, especially in texts from the early medieval era. It argues that in Daoist prescription’s texts, the allium vegetables taboo is supported and justified by the aversive emotion of disgust. By describing the five pungent vegetables as polluted, defiled and even dangerous items, Daoist texts construct the perfect condition for their repulsion and the taboo's final systematization.

This article, focused principally on the exploration of contingency, the body and disgust in Michał Witkowski’s novel Margot, is also a polemic and a vindication of the book against the barrage of criticism it received from its reviewers. Most of them decided that Margot was a novel about nothing, a haphazard mix of sundry discourses devoid of any linear structure. In fact, several critics blamed the author of giving away both the narrative structure and the plot to capricious contingency. The article takes a fi rm stance against such charges and argues that contingency does not need to be seen as a fault at all. It lies at the heart of the novel and determines the actions of characters, but it plays as important a role in people’s lives outside fi ction. Analysing the ups and down of the main characters (Margot and Wadek Mandarynka), the article explains the function of emotions, the body, the characters’ language and their ideas of sacrum in the legitimization of contingency. A special role in this mechanism is played by disgust. Reactions of disgust are always contingent, or, as Julia Kristeva puts it the abject has the power to terrorize the subject to such extent that he can do nothing but to succumb to contingency. In working out the idea of the contingency of selfhood, the article also draws on Richard Rorty’s approach, and in particular his concept of ironism. The latter is used to classify the main character of Witkowski’s book as a consummate ironist, i.e. a person who tests different languages in which the world can be described in order to pursue his carnal desires. Finally, the article argues that in his novel Witkowski not only brings to light the fortuitous character of the postmodern identity but also creates a heterogeneous language to express it.