socialspacejournal.eu nr 2/2014(8)
the public debate when they take the language of their principals – official, gradually undergoing a ritualisation, transforming in the newspeak […]. Their public statements [...] not so relate to the reality but form it’ (ibidem: 138). The mechanisms for the organisation of Polish science provide a relatively small number of persons associated with the current governmental team control over the allocation of power tools, i.e. functions in the central institutions, funding for research and evaluation criteria of that research. Thus, the process of appointing a team of experts evaluating grant applications provides a reproduction of the same group of people, appointed from among the ‘eminent scientists’, while the criteria of excellence are known only to ministerial officials (Hudzik 2014: 138). It is possible, however, to suspect that the ‘excellence’ of these scientists is to fulfil a range of academic, administrative and political functions at the same time, often in the situation of a conflict of interests between these different social roles. Speaking about the autonomy of science while invoking of arbitrary clerical decisions smacks of hypocrisy (ibidem). The rules of the public game, including ‘quantifiable criteria for the selection of academics’ (Chudzik 2014: 139), are established by journalists (Bourdieu 1996). Nominees for the role of ‘prominent intellectuals’ have to pay for their ‘success’ in ‘the mainstream media with the ensuing possibility of shaping the public opinion’ (Chudzik 2014: 139). The price is to accept the dominant view in the media of ‘ways of thinking, formulating opinions and asking questions’ (ibidem) and granting them a monopoly on the definition of the common good, as well as a change in the language, imposed on subjects by the ruling (Bourdieu, Wacquant, 2010). Who in fact ‘does not have their own tongue, does not possess their own existence. They must live the life of someone else’ (Rymkiewicz 2014). The criteria set by the media for ‘outstanding’ intellectuals is far from factual. The media success of Józef Tischner and Leszek Kołakowski, neither of whom were deprived of respect in academia and neither of whom changed into ‘politicians nor silly celebrities’ (Hudzik 2014: 140), were unique because of that.
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