Genders, sexualities and literary literacy practices: a decolonial look of required reading lists for vestibular examinations

Abstract

This paper, based on the precepts of decoloniality (QUIJANO, 2005; WALSH, 2009), aims to analyze the required readings lists for college entrance examinations (vestibular) by investigating: the retroactive effects of these lists on school literary literacy practices; the social, ethnic, gender, and sexual diversity they promote; how they move the school literary canon; and how they contribute (or can contribute) to a greater democratization of/in literary education. To this end, we select lists from the latest vestibular examinations of seven public universities, seeking to include institutions from all regions of Brazil. We consider reading lists to be an important tool for legitimizing authors and literary works in the school context. The proposed analysis is qualitative-interpretative (MOITA-LOPES, 1994; 2006) and understands that all literary literacy practices are ideological (STREET, 2014), which presupposes not only an investigation in dialogue with social contexts and with the various actors/agents around the literacy practices analyzed, but also an interpretation that does not isolate the research data from the power relations and discursive disputes exercised around them. From the observation that the inclusion promoted by these lists of literary works is limited only to certain diversities, we seek to analyze, especially, the absence of LGBTIA+ authors and works, in order to understand the reasons for this absence and to demonstrate the educational potential that works and authors from these social groups could have in the construction of school literary literacies practices of re-existence (SOUZA, 2011; WALSH, 2009) for a transgressive (HOOKS, 2017) and democratic education.