Phenomenology of audiovisual narrative for an ethical formation employing “anime”

Abstract

Ethic formation faces the challenge of being understandable for students, but, above
all, of being expressed in their own ways of understanding and discussing their lives, in order
to be relevant. One especially attractive form among children and young people is audiovisual
communication, whose formative potential has been usually understood in instrumental terms,
when not absolutely denied. This article presents a phenomenological proposal to dialogically
elaborate in the classroom the problematization of duty centered ethics, as it is dramatized in two
Japanese animation productions (“anime”). In first place, it discusses phenomenologically how
to understand the formative potential of the experience of watching an animated narrative. In
second place, it claims that the phenomenological reinterpretation of the categorical imperative
can overcome its disconnection from the affective dimension of the ethical subject and his factual
contexts of action to focus on the caring of the human condition of vulnerability. In third place,
it shows how the previous discussions are elaborated in two “anime”, which allow students to
experientially involve themselves in these ethical interpellations and offer teachers the opportunity
to embrace their student’s insights in a dialogical learning experience understood narratively.
It concludes summarizing the opportunities and challenges presented to teachers from this
perspective of the meaning of audiovisual creations in the education activity.