Wat plus inflation (in humanities)

Abstract

Even if the title of Marta Baron-Milian’s book – Wat Plus VAT. Relationships between Literature and Economy in the works by Aleksander Wat (Wat plus Vat. Związki literatury i ekonomii w twórczości Aleksandra Wata) – implies that the publication offers an overtly original approach to the works by the man responsible for such masterpieces as My Century (Mój wiek), the reader will be quite bitterly disappointed. Undoubtedly, Baron-Milian is well-read as far as authorities of the modern humanities are concerned, and she skilfully operates its glossary of terms. Her interpretations of Wat’s works, however, tend to be questionable and unconvincing in nature, and quite often just arbitrary, since she approaches their historical and literary contexts with an astonishing and hardly acceptable flippancy, subordinating her interpretations to the theses accepted a priori. In her book, Baron-Milian provides a distinct and yet probably unintentional example of rhetoric ‘inflation’ within the modern humanities.