Derrida: What's Jacques got to do with literacy?

Le Monde, 1973

Dis is da creeda of
Mr. Jacques Derrida:
Dere ain't no wrida.
Dere ain't no reada,
Eida.

By Tracy Westell

Jacques Derrida (pronounced dairy-dah), the French philosopher and father of deconstructionism, died at aged 74 in France this month. Derrida and other French philosophers like Foucault and Lyotard, questioned the so-called “truths” that underpin much of Western thought (or Western meta-narratives). They deconstructed the conscious and unconscious intent of writers (of fiction and non-fiction) and questioned the power, discourses and social constructs embedded in text. Through this process they revealed the subjectivity and positioning of writers and their text, and, consequently, of the "truths" used in their texts.

Derrida and co. have greatly influenced thought in many fields including academic literacy studies, one branch of which is called the New Literacy Studies (NLS). One of the main proponents of the NLS is James Gee. He describes a discourse as a "socially accepted association among ways of using language, other symbolic, expressions, and 'artifacts', of thinking feeling, believing, valuing, and acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or 'social network', or to signal (that one is playing) a socially meaningful 'role'." (Gee, 1996). The NLS theorizes that literacy is a socially embedded practice that is experienced differently in different roles and contexts; that it is formed by different discourses that are powerful (or not) in cultural, political and social contexts; and that literacy is practiced for different reasons that are "embedded in broader social goals and cultural practices." (Barton and Hamilton, 1998). NLS challenges those who hold power: "NLS, then, takes nothing for granted with respect to literacy and the social practices with which it becomes associated, problematizing whatcounts as literacy at any time and place and asking 'whose literacies' are dominant and whose are marginalized or resistant." (Street, 2003). And so, not only is the NLS discourse complex, it has woven into it a critical pedagogy which assumes that people will ask hard questions, especially of those controlling the dominant literacy discourse.

The policy view of literacy (and the public view greatly shaped by media accounts of government policy initiatives) is a simpler one than that of the NLS. Barton and Hamilton write, "In the media narrative on literacy the autonomous view of literacy usually provides the framing of what are regarded as possible or reasonable questions to pose and limits what might be possible answers." (1998). The answers narrow as government develops policies that embody the notion of the learner as human capital (to be invested in and used) and literacy as autonomous skills acquired through discrete activities in rigidly prescribed levels.

If Jacques Derrida and co. were working with us in literacy programs in Ontario today they might ask "What is the main intent of LBS? Whose interests does it serve? What does the language of its policies/directives reveal about the writers? Whose voice is dominant? What metanarrative/ story is bolstered and what stories are ignored or simplified?

Perhaps its time to start answering some of these questions.