Travessias (Dec 2019)
A Conscious Android In “Westworld”: References For Considering Authorial Procedures In Education
Abstract
Educational projects that seek to promote consciousness, creativity and imagination are complex, because at the same time that they value authorship, they can also suffocate it. This study used fiction to help understand how students can be objectively encouraged to critically reflect on their own existence, that is to become conscious. (FREIRE, 2018). The experimental creation of characters as an authorial procedure can offer a practical path in this direction. To discuss this possibility, this article analyzes the diegesis of the television series Westworld (HBO, 2016), with specific focus on a character that develops consciousness, because she is an android who is liberated from her pre-established functions and decides to “write” her own history. This paper is thus an essay with a philosophical bent that interprets “Westworld” as a digital narrative (MURRAY, 2013) that can be dismembered and observed. On this basis it reflects on the paths of imagination, based on the work of Bachelard (1968) to then propose educational possibilities in the realm of new literacy studies (LANKSHEAR, KNOBEL, THOMAS), including authorial narrative production in schools.
