Koniec lektury? Kilka uwag na marginesie o schyłku polonistyki

Abstract

More than twenty years ago, Francis Fukuyama reported on the decline of linear, targeted and deliberate ways of reasoning, and thus on the impossibility of history as a way of constructing an image of the world. In view of the current civilizational processes (e.g. medialisation and audio-visualisation of experience) and the processes of economisation, technology, politicization of every manifestation of everyday life, the situation of a reading act and activities that accompany this act, e.g. literary studies, seem to be subsumed in Fukuyama’s prophetic phrase. The article deals with the role and significance of Polish studies in the foreseeable future, which for various reasons (such as the tendency to promote vocational studies, university’s financial policies, the renouncement of the canon understood as closed and traditionally limited list of readings, etc.) are losing their prestige and identity. A departure from national philology towards a socalled ‘common’ reader seems to be a reasonable solution to the aforementioned predicament.