This article was downloaded by: [University of Chicago Library]On: 12 November 2014, At: 19:39Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,London W1T 3JH, UK

Discourse: Studies inthe Cultural Politics ofEducationPublication details, including instructionsfor authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdis20

Australian Discourses onLiteracy: An IntroductionPublished online: 06 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: (1992) Australian Discourses on Literacy: AnIntroduction, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 12:2,1-3, DOI: 10.1080/0159630920120201

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0159630920120201

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy ofall the information (the “Content”) contained in the publicationson our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and ourlicensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication arethe opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of orendorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content shouldnot be relied upon and should be independently verified with primarysources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any

losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses,damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever causedarising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private studypurposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution inany form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions ofaccess and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

hica

go L

ibra

ry]

at 1

9:39

12

Nov

embe

r 20

14

DISCOURSE Vol. 12 No. 2, April 1991

Special Issue

Australian Discourses on Literacy: An Introduction

There is indeed an educational 'crisis' in literacy in Western nationstates. But it is not the crisis over allegedly declining standards andskill-levels heralded in the press. Nor is it the crisis of the 'great debate'over which pedagogical approach to literacy is the most efficient orcorrect. These and related current educational policy debates are butsymptomatic of a larger concern: the reorganization and control of themodes of information and representation in what some have called"late capitalist" societies.

Debates over whether we are in the midst of a qualitatively different,postmodern culture aside, the economic and social reconfiguration ofmultinational capitalist societies entails a shifting of the very groundsand procedures for the construction of knowledge and power, labor andcapital, text and identity. Print, electronic and visual information are atonce media of symbolic exchange, and key commodities for production,distribution and consumption. As Wilson here indicates, mass mediahave become the grounds for the playing out of government regulationand postcolonial expansion, corporate competition and take-over. Inthis milieu, activities such as the production and distribution ofhardware and software, the conception and handling of discourse in allits various forms are tied to a complex political economy of signs.

Yet in countries like Australia, the turn from resource and industrialproduction to service and information work should not be read as asimple, unproblematic moment in the story of technological progress,expansion and growth towards "third wave", "clever societies"characterized by "multiskilled, technological literates", as Bigum andGreen show in this volume. Instead, this turn foregrounds the renewedimportance of literacies as forms of cultural capital, as means of culturalproduction and representation requisite both for the maintenance andarticulation of existing economic and political power, and for thecritique and redistribution of that power among marginalised groups.Literacy is about equity.

Schools retain their central role of initiating and credentialling entryinto this literate culture. It would be unfortunate, then, for educators tochalk up the economic rationalism of the current Federal governmentand opposition, or the resurgent calls for "cultural literacy" by the likesof Hirsch and Bloom, as proverbial 'pendulum swings'. These are notjust educational and political slogans, which come and go withregularity as some sort of natural pedagogical evolution. Rather, theyare part and parcel of larger contending discourses in multinational

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

hica

go L

ibra

ry]

at 1

9:39

12

Nov

embe

r 20

14

economies: they are evidence of a complex politics of representationcompeting over how to construct and reorganize 'literacy', how to assignand mark its associated benefits in the service of particular commercialand political interests. That is, if literacies entail historic and culture-specific ways of using writing and other technologies of inscription, thencompeting educational discourses and truth claims about them can beassessed in terms of which practices they valorise and denounce, andwhich clienteles they privilege and exclude.

What we are witnessing, then, are major educational responses toemergent strategic alliances between technology and capital, betweenschooling and work, to an urban citizenry of demonstrably multilingualand multiethnic communities, and to expanding possibilities of mass-mediated identity formation. As Wickert, Walton, Mangubhai, andBaker and Davies here caution, a very real political concern is whetherthe resultant educational practices will simply reproduce historicallyentrenched patterns of exclusion on the basis of gender, class, colourand ethnicity.

In their 'outsiders' reading of the US situation, Cope and Kalantziscarefully document that the "cultural literacy" movement is hardly ananachronism or an exercise in postmodern nostalgia. Rather it is a keyrallying point for those social forces which would oppose schoolliteracies geared towards a redistribution of cultural and economiccapital. Far from being a populist rhetoric which educators can ignoreor defer, the social class groundings for an exclusionary 'literary'literacy, Freebody's analysis indicates, remain front and centre in muchAustralian curriculum and assessment, however covertly and however'buried' in the practices of psychometrics and matriculation assessment.

But in the present policy climate the options for educators areclosing down rapidly. As Kress's commentary on recent Commonwealthinitiatives suggests, the possibility of refuting instrumental and"pragmatic" approaches to language and literacy by clinging toromanticist arguments is naive. Since its advent as a social semiotictechnology, literacy has been and continues to be fundamentally tied upwith cultural and economic power. In literacy education, competenceand identity are gatekept — authorised, registered, distributeddifferentially and used by differing groups within the polity. In thislight, the futility of 'preserving' literacies lost, of educational pleas forthe intrinsic value of texts and textuality is obvious: To do so is simplyto relinquish the field to those social forces and discursive positionswhich would recast postmodern literacies in the image of theirindustrial-era predecessors.

This volume does not set out to enter into the great debate, to solvethe literacy 'problem' as it typically has been framed in specialistjournals and conferences. Nor are these papers necessarilyrepresentative of state of the art research on literacy education. Instead,this collection is an attempt to interrogate current discourses, such as

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

hica

go L

ibra

ry]

at 1

9:39

12

Nov

embe

r 20

14

those of "cultural literacy", "natural learning", "functional literacy"and "computer literacy". Such an interrogation opens gaps in practice,enabling agendas for what are described here as "discourse analyticliteracy" and "critical social literacy", for "postprogressive" and"critical postmodern" pedagogies, to come into play. Shared here is asense that the aforementioned shifts in cultural representation, socialformation, and economic relations needn't lead to more of the samepatterns of inequality.

The alternatives on offer are becoming increasingly more articulateand practicable. On the policy table is a straightforward restatement ofthe divisive and stratifying discourses of modernity — in effect, aremarginalisation of women and men at the social fringes. Yet,according to the educational agendas outlined here, the possibilityemerges for a different culture of literacies, one in which multipleaccesses to discourses of power and difference are encouraged andvalued. That educational literacy has been an industrial-era weapon fordisenfranchisement is patently obvious. That literacies need be so inpostmodern conditions is neither self-evident nor inevitable.

Allan Luke & Pam Gilbert

James Cook University of North Queensland

December 1991

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

hica

go L

ibra

ry]

at 1

9:39

12

Nov

embe

r 20

14