The Teaching of Literary Theory at University Level. Notes on the History of the Chair of Literary Theory of the School of Letters of the UNC

Abstract

The following essay contains two texts: on the one hand, a possible history of the Chair of Literary Theory of the School of Literature of the UNC, from its creation in 1986 to the present; on the other hand, a reflection, guided by this narrated story, that allows us to offer an answer to the following question: what to teach in Literary Theory?
The first of these texts will allow us to go through the transformations that have taken place in the chair and the importance of the problem of delimitation of the object in its configuration. The second text will lead us to think of –taking the view of the path already followed by the subject in Córdoba– Literary Theory not as a space for the acquisition of demonstrative competences at the service of the methodological analysis of sociocultural objects, but as a place for questioning the scientific assumptions of the discipline. In other words, not a place at the service of methodology but an epistemology of reading as an irreducible, incessant and singular experience whose critical avatar is based on persuasion rather than on demonstration.