Escrita literária como experiência formativa do sujeito

Abstract

This doctoral thesis in Education investigates literary writing as an emancipatory formative experience, grounded in the Critical Theory of Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Walter Benjamin. It understands that instrumental rationality and the culture industry reify subjectivity, generating a form of semi-culture that alienates the subject from their autonomy. The general objective of the research is to analyze how the practice of literary writing can function as a pedagogical praxis and a methodological alternative capable of fostering critical formation, grounded in aesthetic experience as a form of resistance to the dominant logic. The research question guiding the investigation is: how can the practice of literary writing, within a formative context, promote the emancipation of the subject in the face of the objective determinations of semi-culture? The qualitative methodology combined the Biographical-Autobiographical Method and Content Analysis with concepts from Critical Theory, including non-identity, autonomy, reification, and emancipation. The investigation involved a Literary Writing Workshop with 13 undergraduate students in Education at UFSCar, conducted over five weekly sessions in 2024. The analytical corpus consisted of 80 texts, including short stories and autobiographies, 11 semi-structured interviews, and field diaries. The results were organized into four analytical axes: 1. Diagnosis of automatism and the crisis of habit, centered on moments of rupture and destabilization; 2. Openness to the phenomenon, focused on the awakening of sensibility and the perception of the other; 3. Conflict and form, articulated around the aesthetic elaboration of contradictions; and 4. Formative experience, focused on the reconfiguration of subjectivity. The conclusions indicate that literary writing operates in an emancipatory manner when it enhances the subject's autonomy in relation to objective determinations, requiring qualified pedagogical mediation to strengthen individual catharsis. The dissertation contributes to the advancement of research in Education by providing empirical evidence of Critical Theory in the field, proposing a pedagogy of writing against semi-culture, and reaffirming art as a research methodology in Education.