Pragmatic connections. On two visions of criticism under the patronage of Richard Rorty

Abstract

The paper analyses the influence of Richard Rorty’s interpretation category on the Polish literary criticism in the early 2000s. The American philosopher’s patronage is considered through two antagonistic uses: Kinga Dunin’s social literary criticism, and Michał Paweł Markowski’s approach which favors literature’s autonomy. Both use Rorty’s interpretation category in terms of the horizon of the liberal utopia of reading and writing, crucial for thinking about literature in the 2000s. The paper presents moments of unobvious convergence between the two Polish critics who proposed mutually opposite visions of literature and interpretative practices.