O ensino de literatura na encruzilhada da democracia

Abstract

This article examines the issue of social and symbolic legitimacy in 21st-century literature, focusing on conservative and democratic conceptions as viewed through the lens of nineteenth-century and contemporary literary critics. To that end, by making it evident that democracy does not ensure universal access to literary culture, this paper acknowledges that the current neoliberalization project of educational institutions consolidates itself in a battle against a humanistic tradition that advocates for a literary education aimed at the full development of the critical and democratic citizen. In fact, a reading of the ideological crossroads presupposed by the notion of democracy is undertaken. When analyzing democracy as a political concept that makes it possible to think of literature as a source of knowledge for society, and by bringing into debate the discursive network that it enables, like the one of humanism, neoliberalism, and the postcolonial episteme, this text exposes the ideological disputes fought by the definition of its meaning, whose undeterminacy it is reflection and fuel object for taking a stand in favor of the teaching of literature in Brazil that includes narratives which depict the reality of social problems concealed by the Brazilian elite, such as the narratives of Carolina Maria de Jesus.