A Few Notes on the Contemporary Common Reader
A Few Notes on the Contemporary Common Reader

Summary/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.

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