Leitura literária, experiência e formação do indivíduo: reflexões a partir da crítica de Adorno

Abstract

Abstract:The aim of this paper is to discuss the relationship between reading literary books and education [Bildung] inspired by Theodor Adorno's critical contributions. This discussion is guided by the following questions: How does reading books contribute to a cultural education (or pseudoculture)? What is the role of the aesthetic experience in the analysis of a literary work? How might a frame of pseudoculture jeopardize this experience? To guide this examination, I have called upon some of the concepts and aesthetic categories used by Adorno, such as experience, schema, and immanent analysis, as well as his sociological investigations that may contribute to understanding the reading experience. From this perspective, I present some comments on the problems involving reading books and the education of the individual in the current context. Reading books has played a significant role in our cultural history. By providing access to knowledge that is alien to the reader's immediate circle of relationships and helping to consolidate more individualized modes of reading and reflection, books have contributed significantly to the constitution of a modern subjectivity. Integrating themselves intimately with education and culture, books have been associated with the ideals of Enlightenment themselves, becoming a symbol of the bourgeois project of educating the individual: objects capable of nurturing the self-determination of the subject and promoting autonomy. KeywordsThe changes in reading and in the form of the books that appeared in the midst of the digitization of culture over the last decades have made it pertinent to return to the question regarding the critical and/or ideological character present in reading books, as well as on the place of literary reading in a critical project of cultural education.1The purpose of this paper is to discuss, based on the critical contributions of Theodor Adorno, the relationships between the reading of literature books and the cultural education of the individual [Bildung]. This reflection is guided by the following questions: How does reading books participate in the education of the individual (or the halfeducation)? What is the role of aesthetic experience for the analysis of the literary work? How can a half-educational picture compromise this experience?In order to conduct this reflection, I will recover some aesthetic concepts and categories present in Adornian thought, such as those of experience, schema and immanent analysis, as well as sociological research from Adorno that is capable of contributing to a characterization of the reading experience. From this perspective, I propose a reflection on the problems that involve the reading of books and the cultural education of the individual in the current context.