Kontextualisera, spegla, vidga och estetisera: Gymnasielärares litteraturdidaktiska infallsvinklar till Pajtim Statovcis roman Min katt Jugoslavien

The novel My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci is one of the most recognized debuts in Finland in recent years. Its ambiguity, especially in terms of symbolic and metaphorical meanings, has amazed and fascinated readers both in the Nordic countries and internationally. The ambiguity makes the novel interesting also from an educational perspective. Recently, there has been a renewed interest among Nordic researchers to explore educational perspectives on working with complex literary texts. In this article, we explore conversations among a group of upper secondary teachers as they discuss the novel My Cat Yugoslavia with the intention of using it in the classroom. The empirical material consists of audio recorded conversations between a group of four upper secondary teachers. Drawing theoretically on the concepts of fields of knowledge (Aase, 2005) and undecidability (Johansen, 2018), we discuss how the teachers approach the novel from a wide range of perspectives in their pedagogical considerations by contextualizing, reflecting, broadening and aestheticizing the literary text.