EN
The article presents the rise of Polish cultural studies into a scientific discipline and academic trend, placing it in a broader perspective of culture as such and of early-modernist intellectual approaches to it. Revealing the philosophical, social and political context behind cultural studies, the paper uses it as a background to discuss different approaches to reflection on culture which cultural studies had to confront on its path to its cultural identity. This is where culture in its general theoretical dimension meets the specific Polish historical conditions.