A few notes on the contemporary common reader

Abstract

In my paper I attempt to establish a starting point for a critique of the idea of the „common reader” as it is used in contemporary literary criticism. The „common reader” was famously developed as a separate theoretical construct by Samuel Johnson and popularized by Virginia Woolf. Today, this idea is being further popularized and simplified – though largely unconsciously – by both literary critics and mainstream journalists as a means of erasing the possibility of a genuine political conflict/debate. The „common reader” is perceived as a reader without a class, identity or any social background. I argue that in order to undertake a credible and deliberate critique of the „common reader” one has to go beyond the Johnson-Woolf paradigm and into the territory of the so-called everyday life studies – a Situationist-influenced tradition combining culture studies, literary theory and political philosophy.