4b. Response to Nicola Watson (in English)

Elisa Pagan

It is important to emphasize the interest of a speech like that of Professor Nicola in the Brazilian context; here, as has been described, there is also pressure, which often originates in the students themselves, so that literary studies or even the humanities in general generate impacts outside academia. It is also clear to us the way in which the students of Literary Studies have recently emerged with an increasing concern with employment, without much expectation of improvement of the perspectives.

I would like to comment briefly on some moments of Nicola's speech and finally ask some questions.

The first question that seems interesting to me, keeping in mind the story that was told at the end of her speech (about the audience saying that they would not bother to go to any of the literary places, considering it false), would be to try to understand where this sudden disinterest on the part of the public came from. What was the reason for this discontent? Perhaps we can say that they wanted to find in these places the presence of the author's "aura," something like real footprints or traces, and instead find a narrative designed to simulate traces that are not "real" or "authentic" traces, in an almost romantic sense. Are these "real traces" a promise of facilitating access with a high culture, which, when it appears simplified, loses its meaning? What, after all, was expected to be found there, and why did they not find it?

Another thing we could ask is: what is the place of careful reflection on literature in these enterprises? How would they relate, for example, to the discussions about the authorship of Shakespeare's works, which many attribute to Bacon, Marlowe, among others? Perhaps we can say that one of the risks of constructing a literary site is that, treating the author as a celebrity, he moves away from his own literature. This separation, which assures the untouchable place of the author in the hall of high culture, may be indispensable for the undertakings we have seen today, which poses a problem quite ironic: what attracts the public, the main advertisement, is the supposed contact with something so powerful and high; at the same time, it is this same deification that produces its distance, which makes contact with these works seem so out of the public's eyes, something that is reserved for the initiates. In other words, the way one promises the possibility of touching that which is untouchable is what generates, or at least accentuates, its untouchability. It seems that the function of the scholar in these enterprises would be to give authority, a content of truth, with his intellectual background, to the high-culture character of these places; although often (or necessarily), this same background is, in itself, dispensable for the composition and architecture of the place. Where is the literary tourist trying to enter?

We can also say that the picture placed is not encouraging. On the one hand, the qualitative character of the literary background of teachers, a critical and theoretical knowledge about literature, seems to have no place in these enterprises, and perhaps in any enterprise that aims at insertion in the labor market. In his Introduction to Sociology (1968) course, Adorno speak without delay to the first year’s students that, probably, the more critical and sophisticated the sociologist's thought, the less penetration he will have in the market. In our case, it does not seem to be any different. Added to this, as Nicola mentioned, most of this work can be considered as unpaid, so that, in general, the researcher does not even profit from the work in which he participated.

We thus enter into a second relevant point for this discussion - the theme of this seminar - which is the "impact agenda" for the research. There is a pressure on the university to make the knowledge not restricted to the academy, to yields fruits outside it, to have penetration in society. On the part of the financiers - something very incipient in Brazil in the area of humanities - this means that the research must generate concret and immediately profitable results. And, as we have seen, "the ‘impact agenda’ is congruent with the ‘employability’ agenda, which seeks to make university education more like a training programme for the future work-force." We can ask ourselves if this agenda does not concern mainly, or even if not restricted to, an economic impact.

It would be interesting to talk a little about the Brazilian educational system, in a brief digression. In Brazil, the public schools, with the exception of technical schools, offer a very precarious education that rarely generates a basis for the student to pass the college entrance public exam, and is therefore dependent on popular and public pre-exam courses, which are rare. On the other hand, the private schools, for the most part, are totally focused on the entrance exam. There are many schools that, in the final year of high school, do not offer physical education and put fictitious grades in the report card, having more time for other disciplines; they exclude sociology and philosophy from the disciplines, since the content requested in the tests was inexpressive; the students' grades often come (sometimes all forms of student evaluation) from exams that simulate perfectly the public exams. Those who enter the university, therefore, had not an education focused on the intellectual formation of the student, but on the training of their students, on techniques to pass the entrance exam, which causes them a deficit formation. It seems to me that something similar can happen to universities, taking into account the reality of education and research in the UK, as we have seen: instead of focusing on student intellectual formation - in our case, in critical reflection on literature - the university focuses on formation of work-force. In this way, as in private Brazilian basic education, the final purpose is to enroll the student in the university, even if this implies limiting their formation or transforming it into decorables and ready-made formulas, in a course of strategies to make a test, also higher education is to have as purpose something that is external to the intellectual formation of its students, which is the formation of work-force. The forms of knowledge that are not instrumentalizable, in this sense, have less and less place in the educational spaces. In a broad vision, we would have in our horizon a whole system of education, from the basic to the higher, aimed mainly at the formation of work-force.

This takes us to something interesting for this seminar, because we could reverse its central question: instead of thinking about the impact of academia outside of it, we can think about the impact of society on academia. The pressure to make the fruits of the university immediately profitable certainly brings about structural changes in the courses, in the form and content of the research. If, as Nicola said, it is difficult to sell the traditional background on literature, the fruits of careful reflection, it does not seem absurd to say that it may at some point cease to have meaning within a university whose function is the formation of a work-force. If we take this picture to the extreme, it can point to two possibilities: either research into literary studies gives up what is not economically useful, even if it sacrifices deep knowledge, or it becomes obsolete and ceases to exist. There is even a moral question here, if I may say a brief aside: research receives public funding to exist, and the fact that a certain result is strictly critical or theoretical, without insertion in the sphere of consumption, without being visible to the public in general, may seem like a great waste of money, it may seem even unfair, which incites indignation. We could then say that it is the very impact of the market on academia that, in the end, makes traditional knowledge about literature, both theoretical and critical, has no impact outside academia. The "impact" that a non-instrumentalizable intellectual knowledge can have on society gradually disappears from the horizon of the representable.

Finally, it might be interesting to think of this discussion in the light of the idea of ​​the common good. There are several ways of justifying public concern for education. Some say that they are spent too big, that the education should be privatized; or that it is an investment that generates financial returns. But, considered as a common good, could we say that it becomes something that justifies itself? A right, which don’t need to be subordinated to the logic of the means and ends of the market, does not necessarily have to generate jobs, or even have a palpable and visible utility in the short term? A difficult and obscure book, which no one knows if one day will be read, but remains available in a public library, can be considered a part of the common good?