Fictionalizing acts and emancipation of the reader: beyond oxygen

Abstract

This paper discusses the relationship between the acts of fictionalization in literary reading and the emancipation of the reader. For this, first, it makes a comparison of the Aesthetics of Reception and the Theory of the Aesthetic Effect, regarding their theoretical and methodological aspects. This parallel has revealed the supplementary character of such theories rather than a complementarity between them, as previously propagated. Then, it discusses the acts of fictionalization and the emancipation of the reader in the heuristic in-betweeness formulated by both the Historical-Cultural Theory (Vigotski) and by the Theory of the Aesthetic Effect, and its extension, Literary Anthropology (Iser). Next, it approaches the aesthetic experience, the importance of the incursion of the concept of real reader in this experience and the two-way relationship between the founding Vigotskian’s and Iserian’s theoretical concepts, presenting how the first serves the second. Finally, it argues for the relevance of the act of mapping aesthetic experience as a key to self-awareness of the cognitive and metacognitive processes experienced by the reader in fictional reading when building meaning. This self-awareness can enable the management of such processes, favoring the achievement of more complex levels of emancipation. The understanding of the aesthetic experience is — from our point of view — crucial to foster an emancipatory reading, approaching, even if minimally, the many possibilities of what we are.