Literatures teaching and decoloniality: for a democratic literary education

Abstract

What is meant by “democracy” and “human rights” when advocating a democratic literary education? And when advocating the democratization of the arts, especially literature? Due to a discomfort with some of the answers to these questions, crystallized in literary criticism and in literatures teaching practices, this article aims to problematize and reflect upon the conceptions of democracy and human rights that underlie literatures teaching in Brazil, in order to propose a sheer shift based on decolonial theories. To this end, we revisit Antonio Candido’s 1988 work “O direito à literatura”, which has become a basic reference in criticism, theory, didactics, and teaching of literatures to this day, demonstrating how his theory focuses on economic class and on the one-way presentation of national-universal cultural goods to underprivileged students. Thereafter, although we recognize the historical relevance of Candido’s theory, we seek to demonstrate, by reading bell hooks (2017), Walsh (2009), Melo (2020) and other authors, its insufficiency to deal with the contemporary reality of young people in and out of school. Hence, we reflect on the need for a democratic, human rights-based literatures teaching built in dialogue and negotiation not only with subaltern groups belonging to lower economic classes, but also with groups subalternized by ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, geographical location, etc., that is, a teaching that is also built through listening.