This article inquires into what sort of socioemotional education and conviviality are produced when pleasurable literary reading is encouraged in neoliberal cultures. We critically explore the celebration of reading for socioemotional education as it is produced in official government documents distributed to schools in Chile. Assisted by Sara…

Two pillars of the curricula for primary education and early childhood education in Chile are, respectively, the formal teaching of reading and the promotion of the pleasure of reading. These two objectives depend, in part, on the relationship that teachers themselves establish with reading. Previous studies have been critical, suggesting that…

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…