The Clerkishness Reloaded

Abstract

The review of The Clerkishness Reloaded is devoted to two literary criticism books by Dariusz Nowacki. His two publications: Kto im dał skrzydła. Uwagi o prozie, dramacie i krytyce (2001–2010) and Ukosem. Szkice o prozie are – according to the author – examples of writing entering the “clerkish critique” tradition. In Nowacki’s critical discourse, it is noticeable that the author distances himself from thematically and politically oriented discourses of popular criticism, present in mainstream media, but also from domineering languages of academic literary writing, based on fashionable philosophical or anthropological theories. Nowacki delineates the field of autonomic reading, the possibility of which is usually questioned on the basis of reading theory. The author of the review also emphasizes the stylistic specificity of Nowacki’s writing, pointing to a vital role of irony in designating the critic’s sphere of intellectual independence, as well as the particularly underlined expressiveness of analyses presented in the books in question. The latter make Nowacki’s writings original and important in the environment of contemporary literary life.