THE PRESTIGE OF LITERARY READING IN THE CULTURAL MARKET

In Brazilian society, the habit of literary reading and the love for reading are perceived by most people as valued behaviors that would attribute a certain refinement and distinction to those who exhibit them. Indeed, the coexistence with the literary universe can expand the mechanics of human perception, allowing for a judgment of reality and human relations from a greater variety of angles and viewpoints.

However, literature must not be overlooked as a social institution and, therefore, a product of culture and certain historically situated routines. The practices that are established within the literary field thus generate, in a chain reaction, ways of acting and feeling regulated by internal instances to it. Therefore, writers, common readers, literary critics, reading mediators, teachers, booksellers, editors, members of Letters Academies, and other literary associations, for example, crystallize in collective memory styles of behavior that indicate a certain typicality of conduct. This, in the absence of critical lenses, may seem like an organic and innate characteristic to the people who practice them.

In this article, we intend to defend the argument that the taste for literature is not a natural “essence” of certain individuals. It depends on a combination of external elements such as their connection to a social class; their experience with other cultural artifacts; their adherence to editorial marketing efforts or digital or analog influencers; their access to books; the management of their daily time and the possibility of the necessary leisure for reading enjoyment, among other material conditions that the practice demands. We do not believe in determinisms, and we can always list stories of readers who have overcome material limitations. However, when it comes to school education, which integrates the fundamental needs of society, we need to consider the rule and not the exception.

To develop our central argument, we will investigate the 2018 Brazilian National Common Curricular Basis (BNCC) [Base Nacional Comum Curricular] (^{Brasil, 2018}), a document that guides the curricula of Brazilian basic education. Thus, we examine the guidelines that address the affective relationship of students with literature. We will analyze the prescribed skills to lead the student to aesthetically appreciate literary works, seeking to understand the ideology underlying these prescriptions and whether the document treats the taste for literature as an essence or as a social and historical construct dependent on material conditions of existence.

In general, schools tend to approach the promotion of literary reading as the development of certain technical skills for processing and interpreting texts, based on linguistic or stylistic planning; contextualizing literary productions; or locating works and authors in literary historiography. These dimensions are not always considered through dialectical mediations and almost always limit themselves to an artificial confrontation between text and context. This conduct implies the belief that the combination of these elements alone would be responsible for bursting enjoyment and internalization of literature as an improvement of lived experience, even though the concrete conditions of those who become readers remain unchanged.

However, if we agree that learning a literacy practice is something situated, it is because it depends much more on familiarity with elements of culture and political and economic structures of the group that transfers literacy than on training in technical skills associated with reading and writing (^{Street, 2014}). For all these reasons, it is necessary to exercise denaturalization of the thesis of social distinction by aesthetic preference as a natural “gift”, based on the historicization of the processes that involve its emergence in the social structure.

In a broader context, it is also necessary to consider the scale of valorization of literacy practices — the uses of reading and writing in everyday life — that promotes competing representations within a community. In societies marked by severe social inequality, the variety of uses of writing and ways of reading imposes a competition between dominant and stigmatized forms of literacy. The parameters for assigning value to the modes of existence of writing are constructed locally from the symbolic system of each social group, but the measuring parameter that will determine the amount of power that each literacy practice will achieve in symbolic exchanges belongs to the economic and culturally dominant groups. For reasons such as this, we can say that “[…] representational struggles are as important as economic struggles for understanding the mechanisms by which a group imposes, or tries to impose, its conception of the social world, the values that are its own, and its dominance […]” (^{Chartier, 1988}, p. 17, our translation).¹

In the field of reading, the choice of a discursive domain (such as reading newspapers, scientific journals, the Bible, biographies of saints, bestsellers, or literary classics); the level of effort put into comprehension (skimming, contemplative reading, analytical reading, critical reading, among others); the medium (screen, book, photocopy, instructional material, pamphlet, etc.); and other variables that involve the act of reading situate — but do not necessarily fix — the reader in a more or less socially valued category. The duration of reading practice and the constraints imposed by spaces (family, church, work, school, and others) also establish models of text processing, varied effects of meaning, and moods, depending on the purposes or circumstances that move and constrain individuals when they temporarily integrate these circles of coexistence. By applying a vertical cut to this range of situational elements, it can be said that literature, especially that legitimized by cultural institutions, occupies a prominent place in the symbolic hierarchy that makes up economically favored spaces and indeed confers a degree of social distinction on individuals who engage with it, whether in production or reception, contributing to validating the power management that sustains such spaces.

Understanding that government guidelines that rule the composition of curricula have a chain effect on school practices — albeit slowly and heterogeneously in different contexts — we illustrate the discussion by analyzing the “appreciation skills [habilidades do apreciar]”² that are part of the artistic-literary field of the BNCC. The choice of this document as representative of official control over collective dispositions towards literature is justified by its importance for the establishment of curricula and, in this specific case, for the materialization of teaching practices of literature, since it aims to represent a common axis for Brazilian education.

For the Portuguese language component, the document refers to language practices represented by “reading/listening”, “orality”, “writing”, “text production”, and “linguistic or semiotic analysis”. Since our focus is on developing reading habits, we pay special attention to the “reading/listening” axis. Within it, language practices directly related to the formation of literary taste and aesthetic appreciation in elementary school teaching are also considered. Therefore, the objective is to verify the persistence of a “pedagogy of passive admiration” in the face of literature and argue in favor of the need for a democratic reframing of the terms that shape this curricular component.

Our intention is not to fuel gratuitous criticism about the document driven by ideological differences of a political-party nature. Therefore, we will also highlight the opportunities the document provides for education in literary taste committed to the authentic incorporation of habitus that expand basic education students’ symbolic and cultural references.

METHODOLOGICAL GESTURES

The analytical procedures employed in the development of this research were guided by French-oriented Discourse Analysis. As our main concern is to understand how the BNCC conceives the formation of literary taste in basic education, we have resorted to Eni Puccineli Orlandi's timely synthesis of the foundational conceptions and methodological stages of discourse-based interpretation. In her synthesis of the theory and method of Discourse Analysis, Orlandi presents the convergence of founding assumptions in the field. The researcher articulates the theorizations of Michel Foucault and Michel Pêcheux (even though this approximation is conflicting) with those of Jacques Lacan, Jean Jacques Courtine, Claudine Haroche, Dominique Maingueneau, and Jaqueline Authier-Revuz, for instance. In order not to deviate the discussion into the path of terminological details, we have chosen to use ^{Orlandi's (2012}) study which presents a thorough abridgment of analytical stages practiced in the field, entitled “Discourse Analysis: principles and procedures [Análise do Discurso: princípios e procedimentos]”. The researcher unravels fundamental concepts such as “subject”, “discourse”, “conditions of enunciation production”, “ideology”, and “discursive formation”, providing a practical analytical device by classifying typologies and methodological categories.

Discourse Analysis seeks the “[…] understanding of how a symbolic object [here represented by the BNCC] produces meanings, how it is invested with significance for and by subjects.” (^{Orlandi, 2012}, p. 26, our translation). In methodological terms, attributing discursive properties to the BNCC means considering it in its historicity, as an enunciation constituted by the very political and ideological conjuncture of its emergence. Therefore, to analyze the document, we need to relate the verbal propositions that constitute it to its exteriority. In other words, we should relate it to the historical imperatives, the statuses of the subjects involved in its production and reception, the competing ideologies, and the discursive formations that clash in it, overlaying conflicting interests of segments of society.

Thus, in the next section of this article, we will analyze the conditions of enunciation of the BNCC, seeking to reconstruct the context of its production and the ideological and economic interests that underlie it. In the following sections, we aim to circumscribe the narrower discursive domain, in this case, the artistic-literary field conceived by the document. Then, we present our position on the role of “pleasure” and “aesthetic enjoyment” in the literary education practiced in schools to frame our analysis of the skills prescribed by the BNCC, which addresses these notions.

The discursive analysis of the selected skills was guided by the interpretation of excerpts, expressions, and axiological propositions closely related to the debate on the aesthetic appreciation of literary art and the conventional behaviors and affective reactions expected from proficient readers of literary texts. The treatment of this material was guided by the description, ordering, and selection of data relevant to our objectives.

Regarding the methodological approach to selecting and extracting discourse fragments to construct our secondary document, we conducted a preliminary study of the entirety of the BNCC discourse related to the literary-artistic field. This field contains 28 objects of knowledge, from which we will appropriate four since they are most directly related to the enjoyment of literature. There are also 50 skills, from which we circumscribed seven discourse items that will be analyzed here and which we are calling “the seven skills of appreciation”.

As one can presume, the document is quite tangled, with categories and subcategories. For this reason, we present a synoptic chart that represents the selection applied to the discursive corpus of the research, intending to facilitate its visualization. Therefore, we established the following successive separations in Chart 1, starting from the broadest dimension to the most specific one.

In the last row of Chart 1, we can identify the so-called “descriptors”, which are the notations used to name each skill. Their decoding follows the following script: level of education, school year, curricular component, and the order in which the skill appears for that same segment. For instance, the skill labeled as “EF15LP17” corresponds to the 17^th skill expected to be taught in the Portuguese language from 1^st to 5^th grade in elementary education.

Therefore, considering the selection of the language practice “reading/listening”, we opted to analyze the skills that deal with the following objects of knowledge (O.K.): “aesthetic/style appreciation”, “appreciation and response”, “reading/appreciation and response strategies”, and “adoption of reading practices”, which are distributed throughout elementary school. It is important to note that not even these few skills deal exclusively with literary art. In this document, literature lost any possibility of autonomy as an object of knowledge. It has been diluted in the “artistic-literary” field and coexists in the same descriptor with other artistic manifestations such as theater, music, and cinema.

UTTERANCE CONDITIONS OF THE CURRICULA: NEOLIBERAL TRAVERSINGS

It is known that, in the context of the capitalist system, education and the economy require articulated planning. The interest of governments in aligning educational processes with the needs of production processes leads to systematic investment in public policies that promote the contents privileged by the school. Such policies take on the features of ideological programs, surpassing the apparent neutrality of the State and following the direction of interests of the political group in power.

Since the first public initiative to promote reading in Brazil (not yet specifically literary), which was responsible for the creation of the National Book Institute [Instituto Nacional do Livro] in 1937, we have witnessed a range of ideological spectrums underlying educational legislation aimed at promoting reading. There have been campaigns, programs, and projects ranging from assimilationist and monocultural perspectives towards the literary canon to emancipatory approaches to literature, especially since Brazil's political opening, with its demands for democratization. In this path, marked by discontinuities, we can observe the hand of the State — or the contingencies of the governments — exercising control over the imaginary. It monitors the themes and approaches of books in circulation. Thus, the State has restricted those books that might have stimulated questioning of the status quo of social stratification and the system of values and beliefs that serve the exercise of power and the free market, except for the brief democratic interval that goes from the mid-1980s to the coup d’état in 2016 (^{Sampaio, 2016}).

Government actions promoting literary reading significantly intervene in the formation of literary preferences. Those can offer certain works to the detriment of others by selecting thematic (ideological or moral) criteria; they can determine the management processes of public and school library collections; or they can guarantee or not the accessibility of the final reader. Even within the institutional limit of State action, public policies of curricular orientation such as the National Curricular Parameters [Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais] and the BNCC regulate the pedagogical decisions in schools and the development of textbooks to a large extent. Policies guide the practices implemented in the classroom routine.

In principle, the official curriculum discourse is a convergence space that articulates: the scientific paradigms that support the school components; the theoretical determinations of the pedagogical field; the collectively instituted rights; and the cultural dynamics that make up society. In practice, however, very different ideological authorships weave the plot of regulatory documents for school curricula. In a more summarized sense, Michael ^{Apple (1982}, p. 30, our translation) argues that the curriculum should be seen not as a product, but “[…] as a selection and organization of all the social knowledge available at a given time […]”, leading to “[…] conscious and unconscious social and ideological choices.”³. Therefore, the curriculum discourse is traversed by enunciative, sometimes antagonistic, and contradictory positions, representing the ideological struggle fought in the power instances.

Objectively, the official guidelines that determine the design of curricula, i.e. the (scientific and ideological) content that will circulate in schools, influence the formation of social subjectivities. The power structure that controls the forms of accessing knowledge and controls the fractions of circulating authorized knowledge has, in the school, the institution authorized to fulfill the function of domesticating these subjectivities (^{Foucalt, 1984}).

In the case of the BNCC, the prominence given to learning goals — with a clear disregard for teaching processes and their agents (^{Carneiro, 2019}) —, conceived as universal faculties immune to local cultures, reflects the conditions of production of the document. It is guided by premises developed together with international organizations, financial institutions, foundations, and economically privileged philanthropic entities. Institutions such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development — IBRD), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and in Brazil, the Instituto Ayrton Senna and Fundação Lemann “[…] find in educational models an axis to structure an entire economic form.” (^{Carneiro, 2019}, p. 43, our translation).⁴ Moreover, the symbiosis of interests that shapes the field of education justifies very disparate entities participating in the arrangement of the document. There are banking (Itaú, Bradesco, Unibanco), telecommunication (Vivo), construction (Instituto MRV), airline (Gol), mining (Vale), cosmetics (Instituto Natura), steel production (Gerdau), among other businesses that have a direct interest in educational reforms and policies. This private interference in educational policy decisions ensures that market logic and business concepts infiltrate the State's network and the formation of a citizen adjusted to its principles. It is no wonder that the BNCC text is saturated with a lexicon that echoes these interests by advocating for the formation of “resilient”, “productive”, “responsible”, “proactive”, “entrepreneurial”, “competent”, and “skilled” subjects. Subjects capable of assuming responsibility for their condition alone and in a state of readiness to be satisfied with a life where the pinnacle of achievement corresponds to the vertiginous consumption of goods.

By offering a detailed categorization of descriptors that correspond to the supposed development of “competencies” and “skills”, the BNCC discourages the political and critical role of the teacher. It dispenses their autonomy in the elaboration of an educational project oriented by local contexts. This pedagogy of competencies can atomize the teaching work and, even if unintentionally, collaborate with a project of emptying the role of the teacher and, ultimately, contribute to the discrediting of the profession. On the other hand, the detailed description of faculties allows for greater effectiveness in the application of the methodology of performance comparison between countries. Theoretically, this would allow the identification of educational crises and risks for economic development. Despite everything, if approached critically by the pedagogical discourse and by the teacher, the discrimination of “competencies” and “skills” can favor the practical direction of didactic planning of daily teaching and assessment activities.

The notion of “competence” — which functions as the structuring axis of the BNCC, around which pedagogical decisions must be organized — is defined in the document as the mobilization of appropriate knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values for problem-solving and exercising citizenship. Therefore, it underlies the conception that contemporaneity demands the impregnation of new habitus, that is, new devices of perception of reality, and consequently, new modes of social interaction. In the field of aesthetic preferences, if one understands that the typical actions of a social group — forms of expression, moods, beliefs, values, representations, imaginaries, and artistic, culinary, and clothing preferences, etc. — reflect and refract their objective conditions of existence, the BNCC positions itself indifferent to class conditioning. It admits the possibility of acquiring new habitus from learning processes practiced within the limits of the school, as noted in this passage:

In the new global scenario, recognizing oneself in their historical and cultural context, communicating effectively, being creative, analytical-critical, participative, open to the new, collaborative, resilient, productive, and responsible requires much more than just accumulating information. It requires the development of competencies to learn how to learn, to handle the increasingly available information, to act with discernment and responsibility in the context of digital cultures, to apply knowledge to solve problems, to have the autonomy to make decisions, to be proactive in identifying data from a situation and seeking solutions, to live and learn with differences and diversities. (^{Brasil, 2018}, p.14)⁵

This is a posture entirely aligned with liberal ideals, revealing an autonomous and instrumental conception of literacy, as it disregards the practices and experiences of individuals, situated in particular times and spaces, and the influence of specific socialization processes. From the perspective of New Literacy Studies [Novos Estudos do Letramento], the autonomous conception allows the location of generalized cognitive abilities in individuals that, if well developed, would enable them to use reading and writing skills proficiently in a variety of communication demands, or, in the words of the document, “apply knowledge to solve problems”. In contrast to this understanding, Brian ^{Street (2014}, p. 44, our translation) proposes the concept of “ideological literacy”, corresponding to concrete and situated practices of reading and writing, resulting, in turn, from historical conditioning permeated by competing ideologies.

In the excerpt from the BNCC cited above, it is worth reiterating the emphasis on the desirable behaviors for the 21^st-century citizen: “[…] communicate, be creative, analytical-critical, participative, open to the new, collaborative, resilient, productive, and responsible […]” (^{Brasil, 2018}, p. 14, our translation). While we cannot deny the validity of these qualities, it is also evident that, apart from an understanding of the value of citizenship, they become advantageous tools for the employer, and manager of the workforce mainly composed of public basic education. This does not discard the positive dimension of the notion of competence, including when related to the knowledge that needs to be mobilized in the field of literary education. In this case, we understand the notion of “literary competence” aligned with António ^{Branco (2005}, p. 90, our translation) when he affirms that this cultural practice implies “[…] a certain degree of specialization of the act of reading texts considered literary, including both the reading tools used and the very awareness of the configurative parameters of the decision of the reader-subject regarding the (literary) nature of these texts.”⁶. It is, therefore, a multifaceted knowledge, whose critical appropriation depends on the directed development of certain competencies capable of qualifying access to the specificities of literary text.

THE ARTISTIC-LITERARY FIELD IN THE BRAZILIAN NATIONAL COMMON CURRICULAR BASIS

According to the Brazilian Ministry of Education, the BNCC is a normative document granted by the 1996 Law of National Education Guidelines and Bases [Lei das Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional] (^{LDB, Law No. 9,394 — Brasil, 1996}). It is responsible for guiding the construction of the curricula of public and private schools in basic education. In this sense, the document has the function of establishing the “essential learnings” for all students in the federation, organizing them in terms of “competencies” (more general) and “skills” (more specific). Embracing the extensive purposes of basic education, the text presents six competencies envisaged for the large area of Languages and ten competencies for the curricular component of the Portuguese language, in the scope of elementary education — the focus of this article. Together, these competencies encompass the development of cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and procedural attributes that can account for the expansion of cultural repertoire, performance in the world of work, communicative skills, social interactions, proficiency in the use of digital technologies, and the so-called “socio-emotional competencies”.

Regarding more specifically the expected behaviors and reactions towards literary texts, the document presents the specific competencies in Languages and the Portuguese language, respectively:

Competence 5: Develop an aesthetic sense to recognize, enjoy, and respect diverse artistic and cultural expressions, from local to global, including those belonging to the cultural heritage of humanity, as well as engage in diverse individual and collective artistic and cultural production practices, with respect for the diversity of knowledge, identities, and cultures. (^{Brasil, 2018}, p. 65, our translation)

Competence 9: Engage in literary reading practices that enable the development of an aesthetic sense for enjoyment, valuing literature and other artistic and cultural expressions as ways of accessing playful, imaginary, and enchanting dimensions, recognizing the transformative and humanizing potential of the experience with literature. (ibidem, p. 87, our translation)⁷

These general competencies deserve special attention, particularly regarding the progress represented by the consideration of a wide range of artistic and cultural practices, considering the “diversity of knowledge, identities and cultures” (^{Brasil, 2018}, p. 65, our translation), both local and global. The terms of the fifth competency, prescribed for the area of Languages, at least in the sphere of discourse, shift away from a traditional premise in the teaching of literature in Brazil, which has historically privileged the artistic production of a well-defined and restricted social group. In this specific instruction, it is worth highlighting the centrality of “enjoyment” as a fundamental and decisive purpose of literary reading practiced in school, as expressed by the attention given to the “development of aesthetic sense” (ibidem, p. 87, our translation).

As the concept of aesthetic enjoyment is central to this work, in the next section, we seek to provide theoretical foundations for it, situate it within the literature teaching field debate, and present our position on the matter.

THE TYRANNY OF ENJOYMENT

The notion of “enjoyment” and even “aesthetic pleasure” is extremely elusive and polysemic depending on the system of thought in which it is put to the test, whether from the perspective of aesthetics, literary theory, or psychoanalysis, for instance. For this argument, we prefer to consider a definition from the very document we are analyzing here, present in the “Art” component, which is part of the Languages area:

Enjoyment: refers to the enjoyment, pleasure, strangeness, and openness to sensitize oneself during participation in artistic and cultural practices. This dimension implies the availability of individuals for a continued relationship with artistic and cultural productions from the most diverse epochs, places, and social groups. (^{Brasil, 2018}, p. 195, our translation)⁸

In this definition, we have almost exclusively the emotional dimension of the act of enjoyment, making the rational and reflective investment of aesthetic appreciation a side issue. However, the definition fluctuates throughout the document and, in some cases, is tautological. Considering the general competencies, the teaching of literature is also circumscribed by the regulation of emotions (“recognize”, “enjoy”, and “respect”: thus, passive and resigned reactions) provoked by the experience with the text, aiming at the generation of aesthetic sensitivity.

Furthermore, within the scope of the purposes of teaching in this axis, an instrumental consideration of literature is already observed, as if the controlled reading practices provided in the curriculum were sufficient to trigger an interest in literature, regardless of individual experiences. The structuring of the discursive practice of literary reading as “recognition”, “enjoyment” and “respect” (5^th general competence), “involvement”, “appreciation”, and “recognition” (9^th specific competence) forcibly inscribes the in-formation reader into a positive disposition towards literature based solely on their contact with the cultural object. According to this logic, it is enough for the student to be introduced to the literary text to be seduced by it, recognize its value, become emotionally involved, and establish the habit of reading as a consequence of participation in artistic-cultural practices.

From the preamble, the tyranny of enjoyment is imposed, the imperative of the ability to delight in literary texts, which can result in disastrous outcomes for the task of forming authentic readers by the school. Faced with the risk of framing literature teaching like this, ^{Colomer and Camps (2002}, p. 94, our translation) have already warned:

[…] it is regrettable to understand reader education as the obligation of a pleasure that can very well not be felt, and that increases the sense of failure of students who see themselves as unable to become enthusiastic readers, thus responding to the expectations conveyed by the school.⁹

For most people, the social practice of literary reading has as its primary purpose the experience of pleasure and even identification, and the school must provide resources to achieve this end. Although this mode of reading, exclusively dedicated to escape, belongs to the stigmatized spectrum of literary reading, nothing justifies its fixation at an opposite pole to the critical appropriation of the literary text. According to Gérard ^{Langlade (2013}, p. 37, our translation), reading for escape accommodates a form of absorption of the fictional or poetic universe, received from the “[…] interpretive coherences closest to the reader […]”, who would rely on their system of references (moral, cultural, analytical, and metaphysical) to reconstruct the meanings of the work.

Although this way of reading literature is accused of erasing the historicity of works and promoting an alienating experience, the reading implied by the reader's life is a condition, if not sufficient, at least necessary for the process of appropriating the work and for triggering imaginative processes. This understanding is, roughly speaking, a point of agreement in literary theory as well. Despite the depreciative predicates that may be attributed to this dimension of literary reading, it does not deny its constitutive character. For ^{Wellek and Warren (1976}, p. 14, our translation), for example,

Appreciation, taste, and enthusiasm are what present themselves to individual complacency as an inevitable, though deplorable, escape from the austerity of solid erudition. However, this dichotomy between “erudition” and “appreciation” does not consider the true study of literature, which is simultaneously “literary” and “systematic”.¹⁰

Therefore, “erudition” and “appreciation” must be understood through the dialectical key that circumscribes “critical understanding” and “sensitivity” in the same movement of subjective and intellectual appropriation of the work: this is the sense that we particularly prefer to attribute to the concept of literary enjoyment because it is an irrevocable right of the reader, especially those who do not aspire to the profession of literary critics. According to Daniel ^{Pennac (2008}, p. 141, highlights by the author, our translation), the right to “bovarism”¹¹ is even the legitimation of a first “state” of the reader: the “immediate and exclusive satisfaction of our sensations”, which can be of various orders, in a complex series of nuances that can range from pleasure, indifference, or repulsion.

However, the BNCC seems to assume the defense of the need for uniformization of aesthetic perceptions, disregarding the systems of reference and valuation that are unique to particular experiences and erasing the right of the student to not like this or that work. Even in the presentation of the knowledge axis “reading/listening”, the document (^{Brasil, 2018}, p. 74, our translation) recommends the stance of “adherence” to this language practice, in the following terms:

Adhesion to reading practices:

Show interest and involvement in reading literature books, scientific dissemination texts, and/or journalistic texts that circulate in various media.

Show or become receptive to texts that break with their universe of expectation, that represent a challenge for their current possibilities and their previous reading experiences, relying on linguistic markers, their knowledge of genres and themes, and the teacher's guidance.¹²

In these formulations, the choice of the term “showing oneself” is eloquent. It seems that the performance of admiration and wonder before the literary text is enough, rather than the true incorporation of a permanent disposition towards the aesthetic experience. This sense is accentuated by the offer of alternatives: “showing oneself or becoming”, that is, if the child (the passage refers, in this case, to the early years of elementary school) does not achieve the ability to “become” receptive to challenging texts, they already meet the literary formation project of the official discourse. “Showing” interest, involvement, and receptiveness to these texts is enough.

The guideline above promotes what ^{Houdart-Mérot (2013}, p. 104, our translation) calls “the education of admiration”, where the freedom of the student-reader is limited to “[…] ‘admiring correctly’, that is, understanding why they should admire, and exercising their admiration voluntarily or compulsorily.”¹³. Even though this emulation training is guided by the linguistic marks of the literary text, the configuration of genres, and knowledge of the theme, it remains an affected and inauthentic exercise, suggesting constant submission to given evaluative conventions.

In an enlightening text on these issues, Márcia ^{Abreu (2000}, p. 129, our translation) provides a historical account of the act of reading. She notes that “[…] taste and aesthetic appreciation are not universal but depend on the cultural universe in which the subjects are inserted. The same work is read, evaluated, and invested with varied meanings by different cultural formations.”¹⁴. It is necessary to acknowledge, therefore, that literary works can generate gestures of reflection and pleasure that are not necessarily overlapping: the act of reading may not be imperatively guided by pleasure or even the experience of enjoyment if this notion is understood in light of ^{Barthes (2015})¹⁵ about language.

Consequently, a literary work may be studied and recognized for its capacity to retain a social form or for its peculiarities of expression without activating the taste for its particular reading. On the other hand, reading may be solely guided by the desire for distraction, the pleasure of identification, or the need to escape from reality. It may arouse little or no objective reflection that endures in the constitution of that subjectivity. In other words, the same work can be a vehicle for escaping reality or for delving better into it, depending on which instruments (cognitive and affective) are mobilized in the act of reading it.

Following this reasoning, we are closer to the concept of “aesthetic pleasure”. It is supported in another official discourse document, the Brazilian Curricular Guidelines for High School Education [Orientações Curriculares para o Ensino Médio] (^{OCEM — Brasil, 2006}), although we are not addressing this level of education here. From the perspective of this document, “[…] aesthetic pleasure is then understood […] as knowledge, participation, enjoyment. In this way, the reason for aesthetic pleasure is explained even in the face of a text that causes us profound sadness or horror […]” (ibidem, p. 55, our translation).¹⁶ In this definition, we have the intimate articulation between sensation and reflection, delight and knowledge, and, above all, the echo of the idea of the “involvement” of the reader in the reading practice undertaken. In another excerpt, the position of the OCEM is categorical: “We cannot confuse aesthetic pleasure with palatability.” (ibidem, p. 59, our translation),¹⁷ to rephrase the labels that usually classify readers based on their preferred reading modes. In this case, the aesthetic pleasure caused by literature should not be confused with the sensation provoked by easy reading, nor by the purely recreational and playful emotions activated by this reading.

Although it is common in theoretical efforts to classify literary identities on a scale that ranges from the “critical” reader (who maintains greater emotional distance in favor of studying the form and its reverberations) to the “escapist” reader (who seeks escape in the pleasure of reading) (^{Rouxel, 2013}, p. 79-82, our translation), Rita ^{Jover-Faleiros (2013}) reminds us that this supposed cleavage of the reader's figuration can cancel the density of the reading experience. For her, these are all “reading gestures”. They do not exclude each other: “[…] they are different moments of the same reader, motivated to read for different reasons in different contexts, thus defining different projects for each reading.” (^{Jover-Faleiros, 2013}, p. 130, our translation).¹⁸

Also, from the viewpoint of reception, the modes of reading are resonant with the material conditions of the subjects. However, they are not necessarily fixed by them, since each experience of enjoyment is, as Umberto ^{Eco (1981}) argues, situated and open to various possibilities. Therefore, if the word “recognition” — present in the two competencies mentioned in the BNCC — does not get the attributions of a “blind legitimation” or an “unreflective validation”, and if it is interpreted as “discernment”, the formulation chosen by the document can favor didactics of reader formation in basic education (^{Pennac, 2008}, p. 91-126, our translation), but not as a means of consolidating just a “pedagogy of admiration”. It would, then, prescribe affective attachment to literature based on a conformist and sterile contemplation, isolating admiration as a form of purely free and emotional appropriation (^{Houdart-Mérot, 2013}).

In a sense that rejects simplification and easy formulas, it is evident that literary competence values the formation of literary readers who develops specific reading strategies for this genre of texts. They consider both linguistic triggers and the historicity of the work, as well as developing material conditions to effectively appreciate this cultural practice (^{Paulino, 2010}).

As expected in an official discourse, which is crossed by conflicting ideologies and diverse interests, the BNCC (^{Brasil, 2018}) also promotes important dimensions of literary education. When addressing the scope of objectives for the final years of the elementary school in the literary and artistic field, the document establishes:

In the scope of the Artistic-Literary field, the aim is to provide contact with artistic manifestations in general, and particularly and especially with literary art, as well as to offer conditions for recognizing, valuing, and enjoying these manifestations. At stake is the continuity of the formation of the literary reader, with special emphasis on the development of enjoyment, to highlight the aesthetic condition of this type of reading and writing. For the utilitarian function of literature — and art in general — to give space to its humanizing, transformative, and mobilizing dimension, it is necessary to assume — and therefore guarantee the formation of — reader-enjoyers, that is, subjects who are capable of implicating themselves in the reading of texts, of “unveiling” their multiple layers of meaning, of responding to their demands, and of establishing reading pacts. (^{Brasil, 2018}, p. 138, our highlights, our translation)¹⁹

Although the recommended values are still “recognizing”, “valuing”, and “enjoying” literature, we have here a clearer orientation on the concept of “enjoyment”. First, the notion is situated in the opposition between the utilitarian function and the “humanizing, transformative, and mobilizing” function of literature, which already assigns a critical dimension to the act of enjoyment. By again announcing the superiority of this mode of reading (“with special emphasis on the development of enjoyment”), the document adjectivizes the reader that the school intends to form as the “reader-enjoyer” and defines it. Albeit it does not consider the profound dimensions of literary education, it at least ensures the importance of the reader's involvement in the reading process. Thus, their emotional engagement is appraised as long as it is articulated to the cognitive effort of understanding, i.e., the study of the “multiple layers of meaning”. For reading mediators — teachers and cultural agents — planning literature teaching centrally focused on promoting “reading pacts” (which can be pleasurable or not: the student needs to be aware of that) can be extremely productive for the formation of new and long-lasting readers of literature.

THE SKILLS OF APPRECIATION: “ENJOYMENT” OR “APPEAR TO ENJOY” IN THE BRAZILIAN NATIONAL COMMON CURRICULAR BASIS

Among the skills listed in the document as essential for working in the artistic-literary field, seven are more directly related to the development of a favorable disposition towards literary texts. That is, they are focused on promoting taste and aesthetic enjoyment, a privileged dimension in this article. Regarding their distribution throughout elementary education, three are expected to be developed from 1^st to 5^th grade and the remaining four in the 6^th to the 9^th-grade interval.

According to the seven considered skills,²⁰ the literary literacy practices prescribed (and therefore valued) closest to the determinations of an aesthetic judgment, that is, to subjective and intellectual standards of perception about the literary, are the gestures of “appreciating”, “sharing”, “expressing evaluation”, “establishing preferences”, and “showing interest, involvement and receptiveness”.

One positive aspect is the encouragement of expressing opinions. It includes written comments or audio and video presentations, promoting participation in fan videos, fan clips, honest trailers, and one-minute videos, for example. This procedure, if well-guided, can contribute to the desacralization of critical discourse on literature in the school environment. It can function as an important tool for the developing reader to more consciously systematize impressions generated by literary works, including concluding that they do not like this or that book, author, or literary genre, when appropriate. The important thing is that it favors the authorial construction of criteria for literary apprehension.

Regarding the curriculum content related to literary “appreciation” practices, the poem form exclusively appears — with a curious emphasis on visual and concrete poems — in the early years of elementary school (1^st to 5^th grade). A larger diversity of genres and media (physical and virtual) appears in the final years (6^th to 9^th grade) as teaching objects for the development of appreciation skills. Thus, among the seven appreciation skills, all three reserved for the early years refer to “appreciating poems” (EF15LP17, EF12LP18, and EF35LP23).

In the case of the final years of elementary school (6^th to 9^th grade), it is worth highlighting the emphasis given to characteristics of contemporary youth culture. There is an interest in fan communities (fanfics, fanzines, fan videos, fan clips, posts on fan pages) and the encouragement of participation in various virtual platforms, sharing of impressions and judgments (blogs, vlogs, podcasts, playlists, posts, honest trailers, one-minute videos). This prescription strengthens, on the one hand, the proposal to work with multiliteracies and multisemioses in schools, dissolving the prominence of traditional genres and media in this space and incorporating new language manifestations into the list of school-like objects. On the other hand, more than refining aesthetic sense and legitimizing new forms of literary expressiveness, it is an important movement of conforming customs to new forms of sociability mediated by communication technology. This presents advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, it instrumentalizes (rather than educates in a profound sense) the worker formed there to operate the productive forces, increasingly dependent on technological dynamics.

One of the skills related to literary adherence and appreciation that is provided for the final years of primary education (EF69LP46) aims to promote the formation of reader communities by recommending that students participate in reading circles and clubs, storytelling events, and dramatic readings. It is recommended even if the school or State system does not provide any material conditions for this to take place.

LOSSES AND GAINS OF THE IDEOLOGICAL AMBIVALENCES OF THE BRAZILIAN NATIONAL COMMON CURRICULAR BASIS

Despite the advances incorporated by the BNCC in the artistic-literary field that dialogue with much of the theoretical discussion on literary reading in schools, it is necessary to be aware that framing the debate in terms of competencies and skills may allow a utilitarian conception of literature teaching. From this perspective, literature can be used as a resource for the development of “socioemotional competencies” such as “collaboration”, “communication”, “creativity”, “critical thinking”, “problem-solving”, and “openness”. These are recurring terms in the wording of the document. They are considered promoters of better cognitive performance of students by non-governmental organizations interested in education. It is important to know who else is interested in educating citizens’ sensitivity and on what terms this education has been regulated: whether by praising the uniformization of feelings or by the democratic framework of free and questioning thinking.

Situated in the current political and economic scenario, these observations reveal that the treatment of school contents towards behavioral and emotional practices compatible with the new liberal order alters the school model itself. It would then assume the role of social assistance and public security, keeping children and youth away from the streets in permanent ideological regulation (^{Catini, 2019}) and symbolic one. This movement also reflects the new right-wing concern about the tools of manipulation of emotions and cognition. It establishes a “pedagogy of popular sentiments” (^{Silva, 2015}, p. 15, our translation), of which both the pedagogues of free enterprise and the free market, and the well-intentioned or not progressive educators are part.

Of everything that has been said, it is necessary to make the most important warning now. It is at least absurd to demand that a poor child or teenager acquire a taste for literary reading and “show” interest and enjoyment in the reading experience solely from attending Portuguese language classes. Especially if they belong to non-reading families, who experience the most adverse survival conditions and who have formed few symbolic and emotional resources to deal with all kinds of deprivations. Yet, there will always be counterexamples.

As evidenced by the findings of the sociology of reading (^{Escarpit, 1973}; ^{Lahire, 2004}; ^{Bourdieu, 2008}; ^{Horellou-Lafarge e Segré, 2010}; ^{Sapirò, 2019}), the taste is the result of a combination of conditioning factors that are not always distinguishable. It is composed of factors that are internal to the subjectivity of the individual and external, such as social class, religious beliefs, ethical and moral values, social networks, the crossing of language practices, and interpellations of the economic system, among others. Considering only the “school” vector is already a reductionism that cannot be sustained.

Regarding the development of aesthetic sensibility, although schools allow for testing a range of teaching strategies that revolve around pleasure-recreation and enjoyment-study, it is not solely their responsibility to develop this disposition. Material conditions are necessary for the full enablement of enjoyment, conditions that allow for the “[…] margin of leisure indispensable for reading […]” (^{Candido, 1995}, p. 257, our translation).²¹

According to Antonio Candido (ibidem), the faculty of “enjoyment” also depends on the subject's location in the hierarchy of social classes, as the poor have greater obstacles to knowing and enjoying literature. Even for those who can devote time and energy to purely aesthetic experience, authentic taste for literature is not a given guarantee.

[…] the idea that minorities who can participate in refined forms of culture are always able to appreciate them — which is not true — is revolting. The dominant classes are often devoid of real perception and interest in the art and literature available to them, and many of their segments enjoy them out of mere snobbery, because this or that author is in fashion, because it is prestigious to like this or that painter. The examples we have just seen of the moving eagerness with which the poor and even illiterate receive the highest cultural goods show that there is plunder, and deprivation of spiritual goods that are lacking and should be within reach as a right. (ibidem, p. 262, our translation)²²

If it is the responsibility of schools to strive for offering opportunities for more individuals to experience aesthetic pleasure, the State also must provide conditions that sustain this experience. Before the State — represented in the voice of official discourse — recommends that developing readers “show” or “be” interested in literature, it has

If not framed in a critical approach, the curricular propaganda guided by the exaltation of unrestricted hedonism in the face of very disparate literary manifestations, for example, may primarily sponsor the market. It stimulates uncritical “consumption” of products from the cultural industry, based on the training of reception. In this ideological direction, it is up to the State, as a representative of the market, to control the convenient emotions of the subjects. In this case, literature presents itself as a potential means to achieve this end.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Based on the official guidelines that regulate the circulation of knowledge in schools, such as the BNCC, one can develop a curriculum that promotes alienating conformity to the status quo or a curriculum that encourages emancipation. Ultimately, this depends on the teacher's actions, beliefs, values, theoretical and ethical knowledge, and the physical and emotional resources they have at their disposal to carry out their work.

In this article, we aimed at highlighting that the investment in the formation of literary readers in school cannot disregard — or neutralize — the most urgent material deprivations present in Brazilian society, especially in public basic education. They directly interfere with (although do not determine) the formation of literary taste and with achieving aesthetic enjoyment. To emphasize this position, we draw on Graça ^{Paulino's (2011}, p. 224-225, our translation) consideration of the political nature of the work in this area of study, word for word:

[…] before taking positions on public policies for democratizing reading or on the priority of books or broadband in the schools and poor households of the country, let us think more critically and openly: this lack of resources adds to others that have not yet been resolved, such as basic sanitation or quality public education and health. As Paulo Freire taught us, education does not exist outside the daily lives of people. Neither does art.

In this case, the condition of being a non-reader of literature would be one more (and one of the most relevant) deprivation added to others. However, if it were adequately addressed, it could alleviate the violence of the other deprivations and, more importantly, offer an important tool of emancipation, in the Gramscian sense, of reaction and obstinate resistance.

From the perspective of the reading subject, we believe that the pleasure of literature does not arise only from a set of “skills” and “competencies” that, if instrumentally learned, could qualify him as a proficient reader. As we sought to demonstrate through the discursive analysis of the seven appreciation skills present in the BNCC, the teaching of literature loses its right to “intransitivity” (^{Durão, 2017}). It assumes a utilitarian character and follows the logic of appearances to which, moreover, all curricular components are led under the auspices of neoliberal logic.

As we sought to demonstrate, the rituals of perception of literary material are the object of gradual learning. That is, the taste for literature is built through immersion in cultural experiences and, almost always, through the coercion of interested institutions. However, if conceived as instruments, the infamous “skills” and “competencies” would be nothing but mystified, abstract techniques devoid of historicity. Instead, we believe that the material circumstances of the subject, directly and indirectly, guide their behavior towards symbolic products valued by written culture, and more specifically towards literary narrative. Therefore, as ^{Rajagopalan (2019}, p. 33, our translation) argues in discussing the BNCC, it is necessary to “[…] start with the reality of the student and not to be achieved […]”, radically reversing the political perspective of this educational goal.

The official discourse on the theme limits itself to considering only educational issues that interfere with the establishment of an affective relationship with the knowledge of literature. Still, we do not lose sight of the impact of other, more visceral determinations that invest in the formation of interest in literature in school, for “[…] the excluded from reading is not the subject who knows how to read and does not like novels, but the same subject who, in current Brazil, has no land, no job, no housing.” (^{Britto, 2015}, p. 83, our translation)²³. The hungry, exploited, and physically and culturally violated reader is an improbable reader (but not impossible, fortunately).

Finally, we understand that the task of promoting a favorable disposition toward literary works is a priority of the educational institution. It should be carried out not as an indulgence, but as the consummation of a right, without ideological coercions incompatible with the expressive freedom of art. The challenge still lies in promoting teaching methodologies and approaches capable of absorbing the objective contradictions materialized in the social practice of reading, enabling real literary literacy and not an affected or apparent one. One that encompasses opposite and even irreconcilable sensations. One that encompasses pleasure and disgust, enjoyment and indifference, discernment, and reverie, incidentally replicating the human adventure within and outside fiction. The complexity of literary reading, materialized by a dialogical accumulation of multiple dimensions, requires that the movement of subjective implication be dialectically articulated with the rationalizing responsiveness of readers in formation in basic education.

Furthermore, in the face of the contemporary political-educational scenario, the only possible alternative response to the neoliberal discourse infiltrated into the fabric of curricular discourses consists of reframing the teaching of literature in a democratic model of school — at least by teacher mediation. It should be guided by the values of equal rights and social justice and therefore organized under the premise of the right to a qualified understanding of literary works.