Responding to the dominant technocratic paradigm. Literature as selfless education

Abstract

Is it possible to develop a critical response to the dominant technocratic paradigm through a truly disinterested education? And, if so, can such education leverage literature as a “useless” formative force, in the sense of being unconstrained by criteria of economic and productive utility? This paper investigates literature's transfigurative capacity as a driving force capable of transforming education into a device of resistance, precisely thanks to its vast archive of divergent, transgressive, and intellectually autonomous figures. Literature, and the novel in particular, offers itself as a disinterested form of education to confront the dominant technocratic paradigm; it exploits the constitutive pedagogy of its contents (its internal formative force) in three directions or “colorations”: literature as a self-driving technology; as an extension of its own narrative center of gravity; and as nostalgia for the future. The conclusions reveal a way of understanding literature that goes beyond mere pastime: it is, first and foremost, a tool for understanding what is human.