LITERARY EDUCATION AS A PRACTICE OF CARE OF THE SELF: READING, REFLECTION AND RESISTANCE IN THE EXPERIENCE OF XI’AN SHIYOU UNIVERSITY

Abstract

The article examines literary education as a pedagogical field in which the philosophical concept of care of the self can be transformed into a practice of reading, reflection and self-interpretation. The problem is formulated through the tension between declarative recognition of the value of literature and the difficulty of turning this recognition into actual self-educational work. The theoretical basis includes Michel Foucault’s interpretation of care of the self, Chinese aesthetic thought, ethical literary criticism and approaches to reader response. The empirical basis consists of a survey of 436 students of Xi’an Shiyou University and a qualitative description of teaching practices related to Russian literature, reading and writing competitions and ecological-aesthetic assignments. The article treats survey data cautiously: they reveal attitudes and expectations rather than direct evidence of personal transformation. The heterogeneity of the sample, which includes students of technical, humanities and arts programmes, is considered as a methodological limitation because the available aggregated data do not allow reliable intergroup comparison. A special part of the article discusses resistance to reading, superficial reflective writing and the cultural barrier that appears when Chinese students interpret Russian literary texts with Christian, existential and ecological meanings. The practical contribution lies in a rubric for identifying levels of care of the self in students’ written responses. The study argues that literary education becomes self-education only when reading is connected with textual evidence, personal reflection, ethical attention to the other and a willingness to revise one’s first interpretation.