Bądźmy realistami – żądajmy niemożliwego! Kulturoznawstwo i zwrot ku utopii?

The article analyzes contemporary interest in utopia as a method in the area of the new humanities. The author asks whether nowadays, after the post-critical turn, humanists can afford to use utopia as a method. She also ponders on the attitude that would have to be adopted for this methodology. In this context, she briefly discusses the proposals of Jeffrey C. Alexander, Immanuel Wallerstein and Ruth Levitas, while identifying ethical and methodological problems related to utopian experiments and their limits. Taking into account her methodological findings about utopia as a method, she continues her search through Polish cultural studies, pointing for example to Jan Sowa’s works and broader research trends presented at the 3rd Congress of the Polish Association of Cultural Studies in Poznań. While diagnosing them only as a preliminary phase, she believes they may be the phenomena that herald a turn towards utopia in the Polish humanities.