Engineers of the human soul
Readers, writers, and their political education
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8406971 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Liam Gearon (0000-0002-9381-0103, University of Oxford, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 67 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 389-406 |
| Publication date | 2019-07-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | British Journal of Educational Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-1005 • E-ISSN: 1467-8527 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00071005.2019.1652243 |
| OpenAlex | W2967063541 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 28 |
In the light of recent attempts to construct ‘literature pedagogy’ for cosmopolitan, ‘globalizing’, political ends, this article provides here some stark reminders about the educational, not to say political, risks of confining the aims and purposes of literature to the aims and purposes of politics, or using a literary-political aesthetic as pedagogy. Such confinement occurs when literature pedagogy is put in the service of political doctrine. Even when this is undertaken through the guise of seemingly laudable moral intentions – to serve, for example, Enlightenment-derived goals of equality, fraternity, justice, or their modern guise of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism – the well-intentioned ethical premises of such literature pedagogy, it is argued, limits political horizons, narrows educational outlooks and reduces aesthetics to ideology. Drawing on a variety of historical exemplars, the article details a range of attempts politically to educate and influence readers and writers through literature. Deriving its title from Stalin’s diktat that artists should be ‘engineers of the human soul’, the article argues for an opening out not a closing down of hermeneutical horizons
Aesthetics · Cosmopolitanism · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Ideology · Media studies · Multiculturalism · Pedagogy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Soul · Education, Philosophy, and Society · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Postmodernism in Literature and Education
The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Philosophy
Modernism in art, literature and political theory
The Value of the Humanities
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
The CIA and the Congress for Cultural Freedom in the Early Cold War
The Fire and the Sun
On Holy Ground
Is There a Right of Freedom of Expression
The Ancient Quarrel and the Dream of Writing
Literary Education in a Free Society
Literature and Security
Joseph Goebbels. Life and Death
Inside the Soviet Writers' Union
Natasha's Dance
The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature
Against World Literature
Aspectos da recepção alemã do Les beaux arts réduits à un même príncipe (1746) de Charles Batteux
The Postmodern Condition
Culture and Imperialism
The Political Unconscious
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,83 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |