Instrukcja z wychodka zlewni mleka: nikiforma – wymowa pokazowa – gatunek
Instruction Manual of a Milk Catchment Lavatory: Nikiform – Demonstrative Utterance – Genre

Summary/Abstract: Had it been found a few years earlier, and not in the mid-1980s, the instruction manual of a milk catchment’s lavatory could have made it into Edward Redliński’s anthology of ready-made texts, Nikiformy (1982). The manual’s clunky language is emblematic of the bureaucracy of the Polish People’s Republic. More importantly, it can be read in three ways: as a nikiform, as a text to be understood in terms of classical rhetorics with its rhetorical genealogy, and as a problem of postmodern genre attribution. The manual is a historical text (thanks to its social and political context, namely the first half of the 1980s), as well as a timeless one (curiosa can become objects of abiding fascination).

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