Funes The Memorious, Aura and House Taken Over: a critical glimpse into our technologically oriented present through the lenses of Latin American literature

Abstract

In this brief text I will explore and connect three elements that seem to have no relation with the dynamic and information technologically oriented world we live in today. I believe that these apparent irrelevant and disengaged elements are essential in the formation and education of present-day digital humans and learners. There is no real age limit to how these elements contribute to the formation of these individuals but my reading will focus mostly on higher level education students. These elements contribute to the development of critical thinking skills, the establishment of basic relations with information and the construction of self-knowledge and relations to the world. They are connected to how we, as contemporary digital humans, have acted and have interacted and will continue doing so. They are essential to how we judge and understand what we believe is right and is wrong in given contexts and how we thus act. I will be exploring three concepts memory, history and awareness of being. These concepts will be boarded and interpreted through a reading of Funes The Memorious by Jorge Luis Borges, Aura by Carlos Fuentes and House Taken Over by Julio Cortazar. I will also connect the concepts and the interpretations to how students today relate to, learn and process information. In a digital and overwhelming environment, students need certain tools and criteria to process and analyze what they absorb and what they are bombarded with. This is text is a call for us to pay attention to and to think these three elements critically in order to act in the present.