Toward a Reception-Oriented Ethical Criticism: Examining Student Receptivity and Resistance to Ethical Literature Pedagogies

• In Event: Reading Dangerously: Responding to Texts in These Times

Abstract

Developments in ethically oriented Literature pedagogies have engaged students as active meaning-makers of ethical inquiries to cultivate an openness to others and sensitivity to (in)justice. However, empirical studies of students’ empathetic responses to literary texts rarely engage ethical criticism or emerge from non-western contexts. In this paper, I propose a Reception-oriented Ethical Criticism that synthesises Levinasian strands of ethical criticism and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s notion of hermeneutic conversation to map how students express receptive and resistant responses to ethical Literature pedagogies. Drawing on data from a larger study of Singaporean secondary Literature classrooms, I examine ethical episodes and utterances of classroom discourse to outline three such stances: receptive and other-centred stances; receptive yet self-centred stances; and resistant and self-centred stances.

Author

• Dominic Nah, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University
  Presenting Author