A Moving Monolithic Target

 Building on Julianna’s blog post, I’ll continue with some commentary about trying to take on the “monolith” of literacy in a visual form. One of the first challenges we experienced was choosing a tool to express our ideas visually. Our own “literacy” of these visual tools came into play when we were designing the schema. PowerPoint was too difficult. Traditional paper methods would take to long to utilize and wouldn’t translate well to the screen. Additionally, the software Charise and I used last time “MindNode Lite” wouldn’t allow a user to connect two nodes together. We used a free online flowchart application called Draw.io to create the “map” as the the program balances the technical ability we have with our need to create a legible and screen worthy schema.

Our Literacy Schema

On the map, there are four “bubbles” or sub-fields of literacy designated by the purple squares. The four sub-fields are: Cultural Literacies, Academic Literacies, Cognitive Literacies and the bubble we had the most trouble articulating—Literacies, Technology & Materiality. Branching off of each sub-field, this week’s readings are designated in green hexagons. Additional scholars that we think are relevant to each sub-field of literacy studies are marked with orange trapezoids.

The bubble that we had the most trouble articulating was Literacies, Technology & Materiality. We created this bubble to encompass the material aspects of literacy that Ohmann refers to, but also to capture connections to mastery of objects or technologies that Ohmann and Johnson-Eilola explores. In doing this, we also wanted to connect these authors to current scholarship in regards to technology, literacy, and multimodal composition from scholars like Kathleen Yancey, Walter Ong, and the New London Group, thereby also incorporating aspects like visual literacy. One thing we struggled with was the difference between thinking of technology in material terms and in thinking about technology in a broader sense—the idea that writing is technology—because the broader sense of technology would encompass all of the authors in our schema.

A key decision we made was to pluralize the word “literacies” in all of the sub-fields, as we felt that all the authors presented a multiple and nuanced view of literacy.

The author we had the most difficulty placing was Johndan Johnson-Eilola, who presented a theory of text as related to composition studies. Johnson-Eilola’s doesn’t connect his theories to literacy in the course of her article, but his argument about a pedagogy of connection and collaboration in place of single texts and single authors implies a need for multiple literacies. His use of hypertext as an example made a connection to technology palpable. We had originally placed Johnson-Eilola between Cognitive Literacies and Literacies, Technology & Materiality, because his argument is more pedagogical, but the more we thought about it, we decided that Johnson-Eilola was arguing for a cultural shift in the way that we view text and subjectivity, so we moved him between cultural and technological literacies.

In making our schema, I kept getting the nagging sensation that there were connections we weren’t making. I imagined a three-dimensional and much more complex web (a possible flattening inherent in visual representation?). More possibilities for connection could easily be evidenced by our struggles with the Literacies, Technology & Materiality bubble. For example, Ohmann could also be connected to issues of Academic Literacies when he notes, “This age of technology, this age of computers, will change very little in social relations—the class relations—of which literacy is an inextricable part” (687). Issues of academic literacies often revolve around closing gaps in education between wealthy and poor students, and a student’s ability to be literate in the ways of the academy are at the heart of that challenge. In addressing desires by educators to give poorer students the literacy skills necessary to perform in the academy, I also would theorize that the authors grouped around Cognitive literacies could all be connected to Academic Literacies as well.  

Deborah Brandt’s comments about the fluctuating nature of literacy give insight into the difficulty of pinning down the term literacy. Brandt states, “Important too is the realization that the history of literacy at any moment is always carrying along a complex, sometimes cacophonous mix of fading and ascending materials, practices, and ideologies. Literacy is always in flux” (666). In order to understand what it means to be literate, we always have to be checking in with ourselves, our field, our cultural context and with our available materials. Literacy is a moving target.

Works Cited

Bizzell, Patricia. “Arguing about Literacy.” College English 50.2 (1988): 141-153.

Brandt, Deborah. “Accumulating Literacy: Writing and Learning to Write in the Twentieth

Century.” College English 57.6 (1995): 649-667.

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. “Negative Spaces: From Production to Connection in

Composition.” Computers in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Eds. Sidler, Michelle, Richard Morris, and Elizabeth Overman Smith. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2007. 454-468.

Ohmann, Richard. “Literacy, Technology, and Monopoly Capital.” College English 47.7 (1985):

675-688.

Richardson, Elaine. “’English Only,’ African American Contributions to Standardized

Communication Structures, and the Potential for Social Transformation.” Cross-Language Relations in Composition. Eds. Horner, Bruce, Min-Zhan Lu, and Paul Kei Matsuda. Southern Illinois Press, 2010. 97-110.