Literary Mediation as Ethics of Care in Adverse Contexts

Abstract

This article explored mediation with literary texts in adverse contexts and non-conventional spaces (such as camps, hospitals, community centers, and others) by reading mediators based in Mexico and Chile. Through a deductive thematic analysis of 20 interviews, a relationship is established between literary mediation and the four categories of the ethics of care outlined by Joan Tronto (1993) (caring about, caring for, caregiving, and care receiving). It is concluded that literary mediation in these contexts takes the form of an accompaniment organized through a responsive work methodology with communities, focused on listening, intuitively oriented, and situated, which supports both leisure and diversion practices and processes self-knowledge and emotional containment. The discussion centers on how this mediation practice engages both with a humanitarian logic of care and with practices that decentralize the book's authority and stature to pursue other relationalities.