“More person, and, therefore, more satisfied and happy”: The affective economy of reading promotion in Chile

Abstract

Reading is often regarded as a public good and an essential part of developing almost every aspect of human potential. In this article, we survey the “affective economies” of literary reading through a textual and visual analysis of documents issued by Chile’s Ministry of Education. Through a critical and diffractive reading of these documents with Ahmed’s (2004, 2010) and Braidotti’s (2018) conceptualizations of the affective, we claim that when reading is presented as beneficial, pleasurable, and promising, an assemblage of exclusion is set into motion. We describe how the affective repertoires in these documents reinforce oppressive and exclusionary neoliberal values under the guise of the promise of future happiness. The pleasure and happiness that can be achieved through literary reading, however, is only accessible to those who are willing to orientate themselves in the “right ways.” In this orientation, the cognitive is privileged over the emotional, and readers are supposed to learn to postpone any current demands for the promise of future happiness.

Keywords:

• Literacy and reading promotion
• visual analysis
• literary education
• Chile
• happy objects

Acknowledgment

This study was supported by the project ANID PIA CIE160007 and the project ANID Fondecyt 11800700.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Valentina Errázuriz

Valentina Errázuriz, PhD in Social Studies Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Associate researcher at the Center for Educational Justice of the Catholic University in Chile, lecturer of Research in Education and Teaching Social Studies courses at the Universidad del Desarrollo. Email: [email protected].

Macarena García-González

Macarena García-González, PhD in Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies from the University of Zurich. Associate researcher at the Center for Educational Justice of the Catholic University in Chile, professor at the Faculty of Communications of the Catholic University in Chile. Email: [email protected].