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Cosmologies of Criticism: Taste, (Dis)trust, and Uses of Literature in Slovak Secondary Schools

■ Social critics in many societies invoke the reading of literature as critical to both a desired form of political organization and the state of national politics. Relatedly, a variety of political projects throughout the past several centuries have employed literature as a technology for the construction of particular subjectivities. This article critiques the quasi-magical powers with which literature has been endowed over space and time, and describes a ‘critical’ orientation toward society encouraged through reading literature in college-preparatory Slovak secondary schools in the first part of the 2000s. Drawing inspiration from anthropological studies of literacy as situated practice, I outline features of how Slovak students have learned social critique while pointing out areas in which anthropologists could improve their perspectives on how classroom practices relate to macrosociological and political phenomena.