Education as Resistance in Literary Criticism and Journalism: Between Professionalization and Democratization of Literature

Authors

  • Nathalia Jabur King's College London

Keywords:

Intellectual History, Literary Journalism, Education, Bourdieu, Literature and Politics, Cultural Resistance, Marcha, Jornal de Letras,

Abstract

Professionalization and political engagement are usually placed as incompatible in the case of journalism and the mainstream press, resulting in an identification of cultural resistance exclusively with alternative/amateur vehicles. I will use the concept of journalistic field as introduced by Pierre Bourdieu to review these assumptions and discuss a form of political resistance that acts in one's own area of knowledge, is not overtly political and whose effects are not immediately accountable for.

Drawing examples from my research on two literary newspapers published in the 1950s in Brazil and Uruguay, this paper will focus on the implications of didacticism for literary criticism as a genre of newswriting. The analysis of these newspapers will lead to a reflection on two main issues: a) the conflict between the professionalization and democratization of literature; and b) the definition of resistance as necessarily an action that is against something. The article will reconsider education in journalism as a form of resistance, taking into account its risks of becoming political indoctrination and commercial manipulation, but emphasizing its potential as a way of expanding access to literature.

Author Biography

Nathalia Jabur, King's College London

Nathalia Jabur is a journalist and a PhD candidate in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at King's College London (UK). She is writing about journalism's fundamental role in the formation of literature and the intellectual in Brazil and Uruguay in 1945-1960. Her works focuses on two newspapers, Jornal de Letras and Marcha, as spaces of literary and political debates and vehicles of cultural modernization. 

The comparative aspect of her analysis intends, among other things, to cross the linguistic barrier that often isolates Brazil in Latin America's intellectual history. Nathalia has been awarded two master degrees, in Journalism and Comparative Literature, and has worked as a journalist in Brasí­lia, Sào Paulo and Madrid. She appreciates her participation in Poetics of Resistance as an opportunity to discuss and consider, in one same forum, theories and practical possibilities of cultural resistance. It has also helped her to think of the practical repercussions of the historical data that originate from her archival work.

Downloads

Published

15-10-2010

How to Cite

Jabur, N. (2010). Education as Resistance in Literary Criticism and Journalism: Between Professionalization and Democratization of Literature. Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 6(2), 148–161. Retrieved from https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/206

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 2 (2010): The Poetics of Resistance

Section

Resistance in Cultural Praxis