Dyskurs cywilizacyjny Zygmunta Krasińskiego w przestrzeni międzykulturowej

Abstract

Zygmunt Krasiński’s Civilization Discourse in an Intercultural Space
Constituted in Zygmunt Krasiński’s French texts, discourse about civilization arose within intercultural communication with authorities representing political institutions and the religious institution of Western Europe (among others, François Guizot, Napoleon III, or Pius IX) in years 1831–1858. Its aim was cognitive: to transfer knowledge, hitherto unknown to receivers, about the place occupied by Polish civilization in the European space. This goal was accomplished through the creation in the discourse, of representations of individual civilizations which were composed of its characteristic features selected from the respective fragment of reality as seen from the perspective of Polish communication community, and of opinions which evaluated them axiologically. Polish civilization has been presented in a cultural clash: from one side, with English civilization and in a further perspective with the civilization of the West, and from the other side with Russian civilization. The characterstics of individual civilizations were selected by Krasiński with respect to epistemic categories of similarity vs difference, compatibility vs incompatibility with rules, norms and values shared in the space of European civilization. As a result of the argumentative action of discourse, arose a representation of Polish civilization as comparable or even similar to other Western civilizations, and entirely incompatible with the eastern civilization of Russia. Russian civilization was portrayed as fundamentally irreconcilable with civilization at large with respect to those values on which the latter is built, such as justice, rule of law, transparency, and freedom; it appeared indeed to be anti-civilization. Krasiński created representations of civilizations which introduced to European political space new knowledge about itself. Transgressing the borders of the Polish language, civilization discourse became intercultural, the place where transfer and exchange of senses, meanings, and notions took place, from Polish language-culture where they were created to other linguistic-cultural spaces.