Fictions of Class. Religious Education Connections and Perspectives

Abstract

For more than ten years, autofiction has been drawing society’s attention to the importance of origin and class in identity formation and helping to spark the current debate on classism. Authors recount their identity formation in the interdependence of passive determination and active shaping. This article takes an inductive approach based on literary texts and interweaves their interpretation with sociological, philosophical and theological positions in order to develop perspectives for religious education: narratives of classism show that identity appears fragile because it is constructed by individuals in the face of what is unavailable to them and is in the dialectic of dependence and freedom. They offer points of connection for religious education processes by reflecting on how identity formation is shaped by experiences of devaluation and discrimination, shame and guilt, and the fundamental human need for recognition. In the space of tension between aesthetics and ethics, they also ask about the conditions for a successful life.