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Literary Pseudo-Culture: the instrumentalization of literature in the new BNCC

Abstract:

The present essay discusses the process of instrumentalization of literature resulting from the closure of the area of Languages within the scope of the skills and abilities that structure the new BNCC. In order to do so, the argument is divided into two fundamental parts: first, it investigates the utilitarian nomenclature that controls the field of literature in the document; then, it debates what it really means to say human or integral formation in view of the intransitive operations of literature. The purpose here is to demonstrate that, even if in the name of a supposedly critical education, the BNCC weakens the formative condition of literature and of that which does not have immediate applicability.

Keywords:
BNCC; Education; Literature

Resumo:

O presente texto propõe-se a debater o processo de instrumentalização da literatura decorrente do fechamento da área das Linguagens no âmbito das competências e habilidades que estruturam a nova Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC). Para tanto, o argumento divide-se em duas etapas fundamentais: primeiro, investiga a nomenclatura utilitária que controla a literatura no documento proposto; a seguir, debate o que de fato significa formação humana ou integral tendo em vista as operações intransitivas da literatura. O que se deseja demonstrar, em poucas palavras, é que, mesmo em nome de uma educação supostamente crítica, a BNCC precariza a potência de fato formativa do literário e daquilo que não tem uma aplicabilidade imediata.

Palavras-chave:
BNCC; Formação; Literatura

Introduction

What is half-understood and half-experienced is not the first stage of culture but its mortal enemy. Elements of culture which enter consciousness without becoming part of its continuity ate transformed into toxic substances; they tend to become superstitions even if they criticize superstition as such [...] (Adorno, 2005ADORNO, Theodor. Teoria da Semicultura. Primeira Versão (Edufro), Porto Velho, Ano IV, n. 191, p. 2-19, 2005., p. 13).

Discussions concerning rules, procedures, guidelines, and parameters for working with literature are always beset by unavoidable unease. Whether due to the impossibility of a priori, stable, and immanent definition of what we call literature, its genres and forms, or to the understanding that the literary institutes an external thought in relation to discourse, a becoming that establishes zones of indiscernibility or indifferentiation, or even an infinite scripture, a text that refers to other texts in an uninterrupted intertextual crossing, it is certain that these theoretical positions seem uninviting to set boundaries, limits, selections, judgments, and norms, as it is the case, for example, in official documents that establish what should or should not be done in the classroom with the space destined for this field. Indeed, perhaps this is precisely why the Departments of Literature are refractory to theoretical and / or methodological debates regarding the link between literature and teaching, despite the strong historical connections between literary works and a broader notion of Education as a space for creativity, sensitivity, and identity education - and despite the efforts of the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Letters and Linguistics (ANPOLL) and the researchers that allow the dissemination of studies in this area through, for example, the Group Work Literature and Teaching. In a few words, this complex scenario points to the difficulty of assigning concreteness and pedagogical stability to a concept that, rather than communicating the materiality of its objects, is rather continually informed and altered by them without integrating a specific body whose presence can be given a certain treatment.

In the field of curriculum, guidelines, plans, and parameters, however, the language of discussion is another, sometimes merely pragmatic, and the problem is debated in other terms as well. In theses cases, literature, this infinite, plural, and deconstructive conversation, undergoes the same political regime of division, sharing, distribution, and occupation of places to which other objects, subjects, and disciplines are subject, under the risk, therefore, of a possible reduction to palatable content, harmless simulacrum, or even disappearance if their curricular presence does not seek to preserve and open fields of attention and learning to its subjects. As already seen, for example, in the case of the National Curriculum Parameters for High School (2000BRASIL. Secretaria de Educação Média e Tecnológica. Parâmetros curriculares nacionais (Ensino Médio) - Linguagens, Códigos e suas Tecnologias. Brasília: MEC, 2000.), in which, due to a hasty, pre-theoretical, and fragmentary writing, the literary is subsumed by a vague and precariously Bakhtinian notion of textual genres - which eliminates any difference or uniqueness placed on the objectivity of artifacts or works through a generic and unproductive notion of text - the permanence or curricular resistance of literary studies depends so much on an active political stance, capable of strengthening and digging spaces for an idea of ​​non-instrumental Education, a Bildung produced today negatively and in a counter flow, as well as a consistent conceptualization of what truly represents literature in terms of human or integral Education.

As a matter of fact, it is known that, as Adorno (2005ADORNO, Theodor. Teoria da Semicultura. Primeira Versão (Edufro), Porto Velho, Ano IV, n. 191, p. 2-19, 2005.) explains, pedagogical or curricular reforms conducted in isolation, without an in-depth reflection on the extra pedagogical reality and the social conditions that motivate them, not only do little to significantly alter the cultural and formative horizon at hand, but can also work to weaken the institutions or reinforce the scale of the crisis that was originally intended to be confronted. This paper aims at discussing this issue with regard to the text on the role of literature formulated in the new Common National Curriculum Base (BNCC, 2018) for High School. In order to present the argument that the BNCC does not offer a theoretical, conceptual, or formative treatment to the literary, instrumentalizing its place within the same competences and abilities that regulate the other areas of knowledge, the analysis is divided into two points. First, it seeks to demonstrate how the integral human Education discourse contained in the document is linked to a utilitarian nomenclature that controls literature and the uniqueness of its intransitive experience. Then, the paper discusses what would really be the truly critical role of literature, associated not with a specific content, skill, competence, theme, or practice, but with a negativity that, when undone, puts us in the field of what we might call literary pseudo-culture, that is, an absent-presence that only neutralizes literature and its potency in order to educate pseudo-educating.

Finally, for the purpose of this text, both literature and the concept of literary objects are understood, not as a pre-established set of artifacts which, due to a number of features present in them, are considered part of a stable body called Literature, but as a concept that arises organically from the contact of the reader with a specific materiality that, in addition to the sense historically ascribed to it, can differentiate from itself by producing new meanings relevant for the present. This conception of literature poses important challenges for the reader, since it remains for him/her to prove, through the analytical exercise and a careful look at the singularities, that the functioning and complexity of the artifact at hand bind it to an understanding of what literature is. Due to the lack of space and the specific purpose of this article, I suggest reading Fabio Durão (2012DURÃO, Fabio Akcelrud. Modernismo e Coerência: quatro capítulos de uma estética negativa. São Paulo: Nankin, 2012.; 2017) on the same issue just outlined here.

The New BNCC and Literary Pseudo-Culture

The first question that should be highlighted about the new BNCC - and this is not only linked to the literary, although it affects literature directly and in a very particular way, as it shall be seen below - concerns the way the whole conceptual and curricular conception of the document is based on a problematic notion of competence, defined as “[...] the mobilization of knowledge (concepts and procedures), skills (practices, cognitive and socio-emotional), attitudes and values ​​to solve complex demands of daily life, of the full exercise of citizenship, and of the world of work” (Brasil, 2018BRASIL. Ministério da Educação. Secretaria Executiva. Secretaria de Educação Básica. Conselho Nacional de Educação. Base Nacional Comum Curricular (Ensino Médio). Brasília: MEC , 2018. , p. 8). From the “[...] ten general competences of Basic Education” listed in the introduction, then arise the specific competencies of each of the four areas of knowledge that make up High School: Languages ​​and their Technologies, Mathematics and their Technologies, Natural Sciences and their Technologies, Applied Humanities and Social Sciences. The specific skills of each area, in turn, define the skills that will be developed throughout High School. In the here concerned, Portuguese Language (Languages ​​and their Technologies), there are seven specific competences and fifty-three skills that must be organized and promoted in relation to five fields of social action: Field of personal life, Artistic-literary field, Field of study and research practice, Journalistic-media field, and Field of action in public life. Literature is, therefore, situated primarily in the Artistic-literary field, which includes nine specific skills. Four of the skills, by way of example, say the following:

(EM13LP45) Sharing meanings built in reading / listening to literary texts, noticing differences and eventual tensions between personal and collective forms of apprehension of these texts, in order to exercise cultural dialogue and sharpen critical perspective (Specific competence 6) (Brasil, 2018, p. 515). (EM13LP46) Participating in events (cultural gatherings, oral competitions, auditions, exhibitions, festivals, cultural and literary fairs, reading circles and clubs, cultural cooperatives, jockeys, snaps, slams, etc.), including socializing students own works (poems, short stories, and others, scripts and micro scripts, video minutes, commented playlists of music, etc.) and / or interpreting the works of others, allowing students to place themselves in the different cultural practices of their time. (Specific competences 3, 6) (Brasil, 2018, p. 515). (EM13LP52) Producing appreciative and critical presentations and comments on books, movies, records, songs, theater and dance shows, exhibitions, etc. (reviews, literary and artistic podcasts, vlogs, commented playlists, fanzines, e-zines, etc.) (Specific competences 1, 3) (Brasil, 2018, p. 516). (EM13LP53) Creating authorial works in different genres and media - through the selection and appropriation of textual and expressive resources of the artistic repertoire - and / or derivative productions (parodies, stylizations, fanfics, fan clips, etc.), as a way to critically and / or subjectively dialogue with the literary text (Specific competences 1, 3) (Brasil, 2018BRASIL. Ministério da Educação. Secretaria Executiva. Secretaria de Educação Básica. Conselho Nacional de Educação. Base Nacional Comum Curricular (Ensino Médio). Brasília: MEC , 2018. , p. 516).

Besides the discomfort that means locating the entire formative process around mathematical codes and a closed structure of means and ends that encourages an adaptive procedure, through a conceptual framework that closely approximates the language of entrepreneurship that characterizes the new way of the world (Dardot; Laval, 2016DARDOT, Pierre; LAVAL, Christian. A Nova Razão do Mundo - ensaio sobre a sociedade neoliberal. Tradução: Mariana Echalar. São Paulo: Editora Boitempo, 2016. ) - students must develop competencies and skills linked to specific fields that, in fact, mostly flirt closely with professional practices, evidencing BNCC’s aversion to intransitive or even useless processes, in a utilitarianism in deep harmony with the spirit of our time. This policy of immediate use or application means, for literature in particular, its own refusal. As has been said time and time again, literature contains an experience that cannot be operationalized, and “[...] any knowledge that is sought in a specific work can be more proficiently obtained in a particular discipline” (Durão, 2017DURÃO, Fabio Akcelrud. Da Intransitividade do Ensino de Literatura. In: CECHINEL, André; SALES, Cristiano de (Org.). O que significa ‘ensinar’ literatura? Florianópolis: Edufsc; Criciúma: Ediunesc, 2017. P. 15-29. , p. 19). In this sense, it is not only a matter of stating that there is no direct link between literature and the promotion of competences and skills, but of remembering that the educative aspect of literature is the usefulness of its uselessness, that literature “[...] works as a critique of a reality that cannot conceive that things can exist on their own, in which everything has to serve something else” (Durão, 2017, p. 19-20). In the new BNCC, everything points to something else, with no place for negativity, expenditure, etc.; Because of this, the literary emerges controlled by the need to promote a certain purpose or use often outside of itself.

Moreover, in the brief passages of the document on the teaching of literature, attention is drawn to the new objects that should be approached during High School: if before the fundamental aim was to promote the encounter with the radical otherness of the literary text, with the analytical and interpretative challenge that the uniqueness of the works imposes on the gesture of reading, this task now divides the space with personal communication and expression. In other words, “[...] is also at stake, at this stage, a more systematic work with literary writing, the poetic making [...]. Thus, such choices can function as a process of self-recognition by mobilizing ideas, feelings and emotions” (Brasil, 2018, p. 513-514). Once again, if the importance of literature lies rather in a kind of selflessness, in the contact with a foreign language that defamiliarizes the senses and the previous experience of the world, the proposal seems to be located this time in the encounter with one’s own identity - in the process of self-recognition, the possibility of questioning and discovering oneself, the elaboration of subjectivity and personal interrelations, the exploration of emotions, feelings and ideas, the selection of meaningful works for oneself, the appropriation for oneself, the socialization of works of one’s own authorship, in the creation of authorial works, etc. In this lexicon, individual choice, expression of feelings, and a therapeutic practice prevail perhaps in tune with the other chapters of the BNCC, but certainly problematic with regard to literary studies as a critical field consisting of particular and recurrent objects, which cannot and should not result from the simple individual creative motivation, especially in a phase in which the contact with literature needs the school to go through an analytical and creative maturation. Without the early confrontation with the difficulties that writing and literary reading impose, it is literature itself that loses space, because besides not forming a specific reading public, demanding and attentive to the particularities of the works, it remains reduced to a thoughtless immediacy which feeds a huge club of writers whose productions only resemble intimate journals filled with notes and interchangeable feelings, and thus give concrete testimony to the irrelevance of the field to school life.

In fact, creative writing, which now occupies much of the skills and abilities in BNCC’s artistic-literary field, in addition to situating literature in the individual dimension of self-disclosure, further reduces the curriculum space, already quite small, now available for contact with literary artifacts and the exercise of verification of their mechanisms of meaning production. In fact, the insistence on creative writing during High School runs the risk of just making the teenager replicate in the school environment a confessional experience that is no stranger to them in their daily life of Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Skype, Blogs, Vlogs, Youtubers, and a culture that can create authors who can express themselves in terms of literature and produce personal stories or narratives, but who will have difficulty forming readers of literary works. Therefore, we have the establishment of a regime of probed and stable contact with literature, which, however, potentially equals literature with spectacular and imagistic forms of exposure and circulation of the self that fit the different cultural practices of their time, preventing students from denaturalizing or problematizing these very cultural practices. Instead of a negative reading of their time, literature in school ends up offering a consensual extension of the transparency society that forces individuals to constantly reveal themselves to others.

As is well known, the new BNCC results, in part, from the gradual adherence of the Brazilian government to educational policies encouraged by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), through private social entities such as, among others, the Ayrton Senna Institute (IAS), which advocates teaching for the promotion of so-called socio-emotional skills: “Research conducted in various areas of knowledge - such as education, psychology, neuroscience and economics - reveals that students’ cognitive performance benefits when this decisive group of skills is intentionally developed and developed” (IAS, 2013IAS. Instituto Ayrton Senna. Competências Socioemocionais: material de discussão, 2013. Disponível em: < Disponível em: http://www.educacaosec21.org.br > Acesso em: 19 ago. 2018.
http://www.educacaosec21.org.br...
, p. 6). What cognitive and socio-emotional skills are these? Responsibility, collaboration, communication, creativity, self-control, critical thinking, problem solving, openness, that is, a whole set of attributes in deep harmony, not with a critical educational perspective, but with a business language geared toward quiet adherence of obedient and adjusted young people to a labor market that is less and less willing to give in or able to welcome and shelter everybody. In this sense, the sharing of literature with creative writing can be understood exactly as part of the proposal to promote a creative, communicative and participative disposition in adolescents and young people who, otherwise, will have greater difficulties in adapting to that same naturalized world of employees and employers that literature never ceases to problematize.

In any case, besides the ample space given to creative writing and the supposed task of “[...] propitiating the exploration of emotions, feelings and ideas that cannot be found in other genres” (Brasil, 2018, p. 496) - thus projecting a communicative-confessional image of literature - the BNCC is anything but clear about the other literary objects that teachers should be concerned with in the short time that they now have. It is strange the supposedly conciliatory position that the document assumes in relation to the dispute between the place of the literary canon in relation to other cultural objects. For the BNCC, everything is important and everything must be taught, from the classics of literature to objects from the most diverse cultural practices. Of course, in this scheme, which presupposes infinite time for infinite work, mutually exclusive statements nonetheless appear in the brief interval of a few lines: on the one hand, the reading and analysis of the main works of the Western canon or tradition is affirmed, and the document criticizes the fact that “[...] biographies of authors, characteristics of periods, abstracts, and other substitutive artistic genres, such as cinema and comics, have relegated the literary text to a secondary plane of the teaching”; on the other, the document defends the enlargement of the student’s cultural repertoire regarding different forms of expression - “[...] youth literature, marginal peripheral literature, cult, classic, popular, mass culture, media, youth cultures, etc., [...] in processes that involve adaptations, remediations, stylizations, parodies, comics, miniseries, films, video minutes, games, etc.” (Brasil, 2018, p. 492). The result is the formulation of generic orientations whose vagueness may pass for theoretical generosity towards different literary and cultural objects, but which conceals the real debates and impasses in the area of ​​Letters, the same debates and impasses that should to some extent be addressed by the document and about which it seems to have nothing to say, diminishing its declared normative and structuring condition. Just to cite an even more obvious example, what is being indicated, or what exactly is excluded from a comprehensive recommendation like this? According to the BNCC, one should take into account “[...] the inclusion of works from the Brazilian literary tradition and its western references - especially from Portuguese literature - as well as more complex works from contemporary literature and indigenous literature, African and Latin American” (Brasil, 2018, p. 492). Once again, what is hidden behind this pre-theoretical conduct are the disputes and formulations more important to the area, because far from defending, attacking, or theoretically harmonizing issues such as the teaching of the canon and the place of other cultural artifacts, the document merely silences them, proposing an unlikely reconciliation which, without due debate, merely denounces the conceptual indifference of the BNCC. The result, therefore, is an impressionistic, speculative, and groping contact with literature, as well as a formative process controlled by the need to produce certain effects predicted by a mechanism of competences and abilities that remains unclear from the point of view of the theorization made by the area of literary studies.

Literature e Education

Even heteronomically relying on literature, that is, acting on a rigid logic of means and ends, competencies and skills, calculations and goals, the BNCC supposedly does so to enrich our perception and our worldview, to help us not only to see more, but to question much of what we are seeing / experiencing, that is, to promote the integral human education announced in its pages. Well, perhaps it is important to remind that, throughout the twentieth century, the humanist discourse that took place in the name of goals, skills, effectiveness, responsibility, collaboration, self-control, resilience, problem solving, among others of the socio-emotional skills advocated not only by the BNCC, but by agents such as IAS, Todos pela Educação (TPE), the Lemann Foundation and, other proponents “[...] of the new (old) 21st century educational paradigm” (Mueller, 2017MUELLER, Rafael Rodrigo. O Novo (Velho) Paradigma Educacional para o Século XXI. Cadernos de Pesquisa FCC, São Paulo, v. 47, n. 164, p. 670-686, 2017. ), resulted in exactly the instrumental reason that led to the greatest atrocities of the recent past. In the words of Frédéric Gros (2018GROS, Frédéric. Desobedecer. Tradução: Célia Euvaldo. São Paulo: Ubu Editora, 2018., p. 32), “[...] the totalitarian experience of the twentieth century showed an unprecedented monstrosity: that of the jealous official, the ruthless executioner. Monsters of Obedience” (emphasis added) - the Eichmann described by Hannah Arendt in her study on the banality of evil as an emblematic case, but far from unique or isolated. Perhaps it is necessary to denounce this form of education and demonstrate that literature is incompatible with the production of the good employee, adapted to the daily routine of his/her tasks; perhaps we should conclude that literature elaborates a critical position against several unjust laws, social inequality, the destruction of the environment, imminent wars, refugee camps, gender violence, among many other urgent problems that call for a denaturalization of the world in order to be faced ethically.

But if literature does not have a specific content, a particular, recognizable, and replicable way of being, if literature sometimes surprises us with violent, provocative, counterintuitive, or even unethical forms and themes - it is possible to mention not only the biographical life of countless authors, lives that could never be taken as exemplary of anything, but also the cases of plots bordering on immorality, even if later to redefine its contours - the idea that it humanizes the human being is something that lacks and it will always lack a specific predication, or at least an explanation capable of clarifying its meaning. As Fabio Durão points out, the question is not only that “[...] canonical authors present a moral code that is at least questionable. [...] The problem here is that moral considerations, of whatever kind, lead to a personification, an anthropologization of reading, while anthropologization itself is one of the main enemies of modern literature” (2008DURÃO, Fabio Akcelrud. Sobre a Relevância dos Estudos Literários Hoje. Linguasagem, São Carlos, v. 2, p. 1, 2008. Disponível em: <Disponível em: http://www.letras.ufscar.br/linguasagem/edicao02/02e_fad.php >. Acesso em: 19 ago. 2018.
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, online). In other words, if literature humanizes, it certainly does not do so by a thematic path, by a rigid ethical-moral code, by a defense of minorities or nature, by teaching us to defy or resist the laws, even though all these may laterally result from its operations. In any case, literature certainly does not fit a specific agenda, and perhaps therein lies, paradoxically, part of its formative character and, at the same time, its uncomfortable place in educational institutions, and in schools in particular. In short, contrary to most common claims about the right to literature, and the humanizing aspect of literary studies, which as a rule essentialize or anthropologize its contents, it would be worth first of all to emphasize the fact that literature only emerges as such, being able to only perform its singular activity, given some particular and minimal conditions that are denied or deformed in the current formulation of the BNCC for High School. What conditions would these be? It is worth mentioning here at least two of them.

Official documents dealing with the teaching of literature are generally obsessed with the idea of ​​selecting, cutting, and choosing materials that should or should not be incorporated into teaching practices. It follows, incidentally, the endless disputes over whether or not to use bestsellers in Portuguese language classes, often under the somewhat cynical underlying pretext that we should not ignore youth cultures (bestseller, in any case, is a strictly economic category, not literary or cultural). Although this is an indispensable element for the debate on the knowledge of literature indispensable for High School, the vitality of the impasse can be relativized when we fail to observe certain background relationships that prove to be much more important and decisive for the work to be undertaken, such as the case of the time dimension. Instead of choice - a category that is in tune with the capitalist abundance of options and commodities that we can freely dispose of, select, use, and discard - it is worth investigating the notion of time that today operates in literary studies during High School. So as not to confine ourselves here to the most obvious case of the entrance exams, which are the starting point for most of the students’ literary experiences and establish a use of time linked to performance, competition, memorization, hits and misses etc. - culminating in the well-known summaries of literary works, which are the very negation of literature - the BNCC seems unwilling to debate the specific temporality that literary reading demands, plunging the reader into an uninterrupted profusion of texts, genres, productions, repertoires, shapes, themes, places, images, traditions, practices, etc. which contrast sharply with the limited time available today for the field. Finally, instead of the problem of selection and choice, it would be appropriate to undertake a discussion about notions such as time, attention, form, difficulty, reading, and rereading, which would most likely displace some of the clichés that hover over the supposed formative and humanizing task of literature. Literature humanizes by imposing a relationship of non-instrumental confrontation with the radical alterity of language, a gesture that needs to be tested, exercised, and proved, never simply guaranteed beforehand. Thus, to speak of literature is, above all, to speak of a specific relationship with time, or rather to change the way we surrender ourselves temporally to objects.

Here we come to the second indispensable condition for literature not to emerge without itself in the midst of a planning empire that demands that all things indicate their significance and effectiveness. In other words, literature remains literary only if its experience remains outside the utilitarianism that dominates our world and, not coincidentally, the BNCC as well. Literature has no specific function: it does not make us better, it does not interfere directly or pragmatically with the world, it has no specific content, and it is not even a definitive or a priori-defined concept. In this sense, its action will always be negative, that is, its task may be to disarm the illegitimate thought that things have to be useful, have to serve something, have to produce a specific effect beyond that of reading. Thus, literature introduces another idea of ​​education, according to which learning means partially detaching oneself from the demands that the world places in a naturalized way, contrary to what the BNCC does with its competences and abilities. For literature, education will always have to do with a deformative residue, or rather, education also occurs there where the chaining between means and ends breaks, and that is only why it is capable of instituting another time regime. Now, to suggest the presence of a particular object in educational institutions by defending its deforming character is not a very seductive strategy when our interlocutors are only interested in skills, practices, goals, results, not to mention the recent obsession with entrepreneurship and innovation, which usually means using, replacing, and discarding even faster. In any case, this is the unintuitive task for teachers of literature (and educators in general) at the moment when the screw of utilitarianism and pragmatism takes a new turn, squeezing, and choking even more the intellectual remnant in the educative processes: preserving and making room for objects and actions that reinsert the literary experience in its open and unpredictable place.

Final Remarks

In a 2016 publication that aims to present “[...] the useful lessons of the ongoing implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS)” in order to clarify what can be expected from Brazil’s new BNCC, David Plank - consultant to national and international organizations such as the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, in addition to being a constant partner of the Ministry of Education (MEC) when it comes to educational reform - does not hesitate to say that the choice of a common base involves complex political controversies, which cause damage to the government. What was done in the US case to circumvent the controversies? “CCSS creators sought to avoid disciplines that could engender political controversy and cling to ‘core disciplines’ [Language and Mathematics], where learning patterns are in principle indifferent to specific curriculum content” (Plank, 2016PLANK, David. Implementação da BNC: lições do common core. Movimento pela Base Nacional Comum, Brasília, 2016. Disponível em: < Disponível em: http://www.movimentopelabase.org.br > Acesso em: 19 de ago. 2018.
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, p. 3). The most telling thing about Plank’s statement, beyond the immediate pedagogical guidelines and their resemblance to the Brazilian case, is the understanding that Mathematics and Language, the fundamental subjects, are stable or impartial areas that do not feed political debate and dispense with singular formulations. What image of formation or education derives from an instrumental treatment averse to that which produces friction and which takes the realm of language - and therefore of literary - as unproblematic? What is the use of literature in these terms?

There is a 1930 book by Siegfried Kracauer, burned in 1933 during the Third Reich, which presents an image of education very similar to what we see proposed in the BNCC. During an interview with the manager of a well-known Berlin department store, Kracauer realizes the decisive role he attributed to the appearance and behavior of his employees: “‘[...] We understand that maintaining a pleasing appearance is of great importance’” (Kracauer, 1998KRACAUER, Siegfried. The Salaried Masses Duty and Distraction in Weimar Germany. London; New York: Verso, 1998. , p. 38), states the manager. Asking him what precisely he understands as pleasing, whether it would be something like a sassy or beautiful appearance, the writer then hears the following answer, both gloomy and enlightening: “‘[...] ‘no, not quite ‘pretty’. There is something much more important ... something like, well, you know, a morally pink aspect’” (Kracauer, 1998, p. 38). A morally pink aspect, of course, in relation to a kind of life that is anything but pink, as the author reminds us: “This is what the hiring people want. They would like to cover their lives with a varnish, hiding a reality far from pink” (Kracauer, 1998, p. 38). An impossible life, however, partially reconciled through a varnish that points the way to survival: a morally pink aspect, synonymous with responsibility, collaboration, communication, creativity, self-control, critical thinking, problem solving, proactivity, individual freedom, openness, and a use of oneself and of one’s body that will never create impasses for employers and legitimate ways of being in the world.

Perhaps literature, bound by the obligation to promote skills and abilities and a pacified coexistence through a collective and integrative spectacle, plays a decisive role: to cover with the varnish of a supposed integral or human Education - a morally rose-colored complexion - the sensitivity of subjects who might otherwise possibly refuse a purely adaptive process and demand another life for themselves and others. In other words, literature can, if controlled for this purpose, have a specific function, a clear utility, and in harmony with the constant concern of the BNCC (2018, p. 14) around “[...] intentional construction of educational processes that promote learning in tune with the needs, possibilities and interests of students and also with the challenges of contemporary society”. But this is precisely what we might call literary pseudo-culture, not a half-education, but a median experimentation that places literature in a space where its intransitive operations are neutralized and captured by a spectacular device of uses and functions, means and ends, skills and abilities. In this sense, it is not necessary to wait in order to know if the new BNCC will fail, because it has already failed, and has repeatedly failed, just look at the decisive moments of the twentieth century in order to know the effects produced by a rationality reduced to the sign of productivism, technique, competition, and, therefore, the violence of egoism.

Referências

  • ADORNO, Theodor. Teoria da Semicultura. Primeira Versão (Edufro), Porto Velho, Ano IV, n. 191, p. 2-19, 2005.
  • BRASIL. Secretaria de Educação Média e Tecnológica. Parâmetros curriculares nacionais (Ensino Médio) - Linguagens, Códigos e suas Tecnologias. Brasília: MEC, 2000.
  • BRASIL. Ministério da Educação. Secretaria Executiva. Secretaria de Educação Básica. Conselho Nacional de Educação. Base Nacional Comum Curricular (Ensino Médio). Brasília: MEC , 2018.
  • DARDOT, Pierre; LAVAL, Christian. A Nova Razão do Mundo - ensaio sobre a sociedade neoliberal. Tradução: Mariana Echalar. São Paulo: Editora Boitempo, 2016.
  • DURÃO, Fabio Akcelrud. Sobre a Relevância dos Estudos Literários Hoje. Linguasagem, São Carlos, v. 2, p. 1, 2008. Disponível em: <Disponível em: http://www.letras.ufscar.br/linguasagem/edicao02/02e_fad.php >. Acesso em: 19 ago. 2018.
    » http://www.letras.ufscar.br/linguasagem/edicao02/02e_fad.php
  • DURÃO, Fabio Akcelrud. Modernismo e Coerência: quatro capítulos de uma estética negativa. São Paulo: Nankin, 2012.
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  • Translated by André Cechinel

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    28 Nov 2019
  • Date of issue
    2019

History

  • Received
    27 Aug 2018
  • Accepted
    16 Sept 2019
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