Critical literacies: Ever-evolving

Abstract

My heartfelt thanks to the editors for inviting me to participate in this special issue. I am humbled by the invitation and doubly pleased to share my thoughts. I was given the freedom to respond via interview or written text; the latter suits me best. I have written in a tone hoping to convey the way an interview may have occurred as I consider the framing of the call and respond to a few queries posed for this conversation. I am a US-based scholar, thus while extending the conversation globally, my response is on evolving notions of critical theorising in the United States.

My body of research includes interrogating traditional accounts of the history of literacy, most notably as portrayed in the United States. I have done so, in part, by questioning colonialism, Eurocentrism, and Westernised definitions and views of literacy that fail to acknowledge literacy as a global construct. From a critical perspective, I understand that the perpetuation of siloed Eurocentric geopolitical views of literacy is not haphazard; they are intentionally crafted to valorize a quest for literacy dominance and power. I argue that to democratise histories of literacy, we must include literacy among non-European and non-English-dominant people, given that centuries of literacy existed among some groups of people before Europeans were aware of their existence. A retelling of the history of world literacies exceeds the available space of this response, but an example from the African Diaspora may help clarify this point.

Histories of literacy among Black people, written by Black scholars, acknowledge Black achievement, brilliance, culture, experiences, language, and literacy. To be clear, millions of African people were captured, transported, and enslaved throughout the Americas, leading Diouf (1998, 2011) to estimate that around 10% of enslaved African people transported to the Americas were literate. The impact of this statement is hard to grasp. The idea of literate enslaved African people supports a counternarrative to traditional histories of literacy as emanating from Greece and Italy. Acknowledging that tens of thousands of literate African people existed before most Europeans acquired literacy will be contested in the face of undeniable historical facts. Moreover, there is likely to be an outcry to whitewash the centuries-old mischaracterization of people of African descent as biologically, genetically, and intellectually incapable of learning to read. The pathologising of people of African descent has been most pronounced in Europe and the Americas, although the impact has been global.

The autobiography of Omar Ibn Said is the only known autobiography to have been written by a person while enslaved (Alryyes and Said, 2011). His autobiography is among hundreds of autobiographies written by formerly enslaved people of African descent in the United States. Equally important are the autobiographies written by formerly enslaved people of African descent globally, for example, Brazil, Canada, England, Haiti, among others (see also Khan, 2020). Collectively, these texts are representative first-hand accounts of Black life under enslavement that must be acknowledged, celebrated, and reclaimed within an inclusive history of literacy. In my literacy analysis of Omar Ibn Said's autobiography, I uncovered revelatory information about the role of literacy beyond the West, not beholden to American exceptionalism, Eurocentrism, or White supremacy. In his autobiography, Omar Ibn Said, boldly claims his humanity in the face of White supremacy. His epistemological and ideological positions are not rooted in Europe or America—they are African and Islamic—and imperative for his survival.

The new approach to understanding literacy, a transcendent approach (Willis, forthcoming), democratises and reconceptualises the definition of literacy: respecting the humanity of each person as a fellow human, providing access to literacy as a human right, understanding literacy as a global construct, and producing authenticated knowledge. Authenticated knowledge does not begin with the coloniser nor with the knowledge of the coloniser's ways of knowing. Authenticated knowledge begins with critical consciousness that examines and values the world's cultural, ethnic, gendered, linguistic, racial, and religious knowledge as explained by those closest to it. We all can learn from a broad and inclusive history of literacy among all cultural, ethnic, gendered, linguistic, racial, and religious groups. This knowledge should inform critical literacy researchers as they work among and within varying populations. We should ask ourselves, as Brayboy et al., 2012, suggests: ‘What kinds of connections can you envision among epistemologies (ways of knowing), ontologies (ways of being), axiologies (value systems), and the research process?’ (p. 427). We also can learn to decentre Whiteness and discard the colonialist stance toward the literacies of non-Eurocentric and non-English dominant people. It will take work as we learn to value and centre Africana, Arab, and Muslim, Asian, Latinx, Native American, and Indigenous epistemologies. And we must learn to move beyond the White gaze and produce critical and socially just literacy. Is this possible? Is it realistic in modern society?

It is absolutely possible, as described in and across multiple chapters in an outstanding compendium of critical literacy theorising by Pandya et al.'s (2022) The Handbook of critical literacies. The transnational group of editors, founders of the Transnational Critical Literacy Network present a compilation (50 chapters) of critical literacy and social justice scholarship. They enhance our understanding of critical theorising, as they acknowledge their ‘deliberate attempt to broaden and diversify the scholars who might find intellectual homes under a revitalized critical literacy umbrella’ (p. x). Building and expanding the history, traditions, and theories within critical literacies along with acknowledging current knowledge and theoretical approaches; they offer a definition of critical literacies as ‘literate practices individuals need in order to survive and thrive in the world, foregrounding the concept that information and texts are never neutral; they afford the ability to produce powerful texts that address injustices and our lived worlds’ (p. 3). Importantly, they highlight, ‘we intentionally draw on multiple critical epistemologies, including those of European, Black, and Indigenous thinkers from the Global South and the Global North’ (p. 3). In so doing, they enlarge the scope of critical theorising and reflexively note the shifting meaning of critical literacy as traditionally dominated by scholars from the Global North, ‘especially by white, Anglophone discourses’ (Mora et al., 2022, p. 466). The traditional framework ‘sometimes obscures attentions that scholars and non-Anglophone regions face when they move across the different languages they use to talk about literacy’ (p. 466). The editors and authors represent multiple geo-political spaces as they engage and re-imagine critical literacy and literacy approaches, assessments, curriculum, instruction, methods, praxis, and theories as inclusive of cultures, ethnicities, genders, languages, and races.

EQ: Historically, you come from a long line of scholars and a tradition of literacy that has seen various waves of evolution informing what we believe critical literacy is today. Tell us, what major shifts have you experienced since the inception of your time in the field and what led you to choose critical literacy as a vehicle for changing classrooms and schools?

AIW: I begin with snippets of my own journey, followed by brief comments from Luke's (2018) critical literacy scholarship and commentary informed by Crenshaw's (1991, 2021) critical race theory scholarship.

As a Black woman in the academy, my journey always has been both personal and political. I was prone to consider the role of oppression and power in shaping the outcomes of Black people's lives growing up in the United States during the 1970s. I read Black scholarship before entering the professoriate and quickly learned it was an undervalued resource among some White academics. The onset of my theoretical journey in the academy is rooted in Critical Theory (CT), as I read widely about its foundations, locating a theoretical space that seemed both familiar and distinct. Although CT focused more exclusively on social economic class in relation to power in Europe, I was not unfamiliar with such conversations in the United States centred on social class, power, and race. As broader notions of critical theorising emerged, I was eager to examine their affordances in literacy.

I expanded my reading to include critical theorists in the United States and beyond who were engaging in critical literacy research, including the late Brazilian scholar, Paulo Freire. I found an early ideological space in CT that was missing in traditional histories of literacy. Later, I became a devotee, or Freirediana, reading everything written by him and his contemporaries. My ideas, however, began to shift after I attended a Pedagogy of the Theatre conference in Omaha, NE, in the late 1990s. Paulo Freire was in attendance and responded to questions from the audience. He appeared noticeably uncomfortable when queried about why issues of race/racism, and gender seldom appeared in his work. Through translators, he apologised for his oversight of women but did not engage in a discussion of race. At the time, I knew little about the complicated and vexing history of race and racism in Brazil.

They also expressed an uneasiness about the roots of CT as reflected in theorising by Europeans, scholarship centred on Whiteness, and a lack of inclusion of globally and nationally racialized and oppressed people.

After reading bell Hooks's (1994) Teaching to Transgress, in which she shares her interview with Freire and his description of himself as White, I was surprised and left wondering, had I misread his critical literacy concerns? Who was he identifying, or not identifying, as the oppressed in Brazil? Next, I read his edited text, Mentoring the Mentor: A Critical Dialogue with Paulo Freire, in which Gloria Ladson Billings (1997) discusses race as a missing feature of critical pedagogy. My need to understand Freire (2002), description of critical literacy drew me to search deeper, re-reading his Education for Critical Consciousness (1973), wherein he acknowledges slavery in Brazil (again, not identifying race), and his Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), wherein his reference to the oppressed is conveyed in the term, peasants. Who were considered Brazilian peasants in the mid-1900s? Had I assumed he would acknowledge that the oppressed of Brazil were poor people who were also Black, Brown, and Indigenous people? Clearly, he does not specifically identify people by race (photos of the period and progeny illuminate racial differences). His focus is on people who were poor, people who were on the margins of Brazilian society, yet without cultural, ethnic, gender, linguistic, or racial identifiers. I even enrolled in Portuguese language classes to better grasp the language; was something lost in translation?

I wondered whether, as a Black American, had I romanticised his scholarship and failed to see its shortcomings about race/racism in Brazil, and during a Fulbright in Brazil in 2014, I explored Paulo Freire's life, scholarship, and legacy. I read his writings, attended courses, seminars, monthly Freirediana meetings, and a statewide Paulo Freire conference. I also interviewed devotees of Freire's scholarship, people who were carrying on his work in Rio Grande do Sul. Across these experiences, Freire was regarded in reverent tones, hailed as a people's hero, honoured for his work in literacy, remembered with immense gratitude, and worshipped by some. During one of my interviews, Imaculada was moved into a trance-like space, she shook, and her eyes filled with tears that gently rolled down her face, as she recalled his influence on her life (Willis, 2017, p. 47). S. She holds a doctorate and has served as the Coordinator of Popular Education in RS and taught at the university level using Freire's theoretical and pedagogical models. Her activism far exceeds teaching graduate courses and writing academic papers, and she each semester she continues to negotiate with the state government to offer free adult literacy courses in some of the poorest Black neighbourhoods in her community.

I agreed, but remained bothered by his initial weak attribution of Fanon, 2008 concept of critical consciousness that addresses colonialism, oppression, and race. In my world, addressing race and racism were integral to critical literacy. While in Brazil, I began to understand his scholarship, how Freire's lack of attention to race and racism as embedded in Brazil's geopolitical contexts, and his approach to race and racism, both historically and contemporaneously. Freire's ever-evolving definition of conscientização (Willis et al., 2008) was concerning, as a fundamental feature of critical literacy appeared to minimise and leave race and racism unaccounted for.

Although Fanon and Freire were correct in understanding the importance of critical consciousness as the bedrock of critical literacy, their approaches differed; addressing race and racism were integral to critical literacy. I also began to wonder about—what appeared to be—missing critical conscious scholarship as a global phenomenon. It seemed that critical understandings about how the world in which you live functions economically, intellectually, morally, politically, and socially were not confined to Western Europe, men, economic status, or social standing. Surely, beyond the Frankfurt School and the evolution of critical theory (CT), there were people who voiced views of their worlds in ways that were not embedded in Americanism/Eurocentrism/Whiteness, yet were unacknowledged as reflective of critical thought. Where was this missing scholarship in criticality, critical literacy, and critical pedagogy? To be clear, where was the scholarship of Black people who wrote counter-narratives about who we are as a people brought from other shores?

I returned to Black scholarship written in response to the political and social circumstances framing their lives, that technically was not categorised or recognised as part of critical thought; I realised how their scholarship challenged the status quo and the failure of democracy to address inequality. This rich body of scholarship, beginning in the 1800s with David Walker, Frederick Douglass, W.E. B. DuBois, Anna Julia (Haywood) Cooper; continuing into the 1900s with James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, bell hooks, C. L. R. James, and Cornel West; and, continuing into the 2000s with Eddie Glaude, Fred Moten, and Robyn Kelly, among others, remains an untapped resource among critical theorists. Collectively, the scholarship rested on ‘interrogating knowledge production itself’ (Kelley quoted in Taylor, 2023, para. 23). Black scholarship has helped to sharpen my focus on culture, ethnicity, identity, race, and racism within critical literacy.

I am especially connected to the familiarity, knowingness, and thinking of Black women scholars as part of a community of ‘radical thinkers who tirelessly imagined other ways to live and never failed to consider how the world might be otherwise’ (Hartman, 2019, p. xv). Their work provides a communal space born out of shared experiences and conversations. A space where you do not want the conversation to end, where you are cared for, loved, and nurtured with insight and wisdom. The life and scholarship of Anna Julia (Haywood) Cooper, the Mother of Black Feminism, have been immensely helpful in framing my understanding of critical literacy and social justice. Cooper's (1892 book A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South includes speeches and writings in which she exhibits cultural, economic, gendered, and racial discernment as necessary survival skills to be developed by Black women living in the United States (see also Lemert & Bhan, 1998). Cooper argues it is important to look ‘behind the veil’ to understand systems of power, acknowledging how hierarchies are established by White men and women, and some Black men. Her observations were conveyed in rich descriptive language and read among Black scholars but seemingly invisible to others. Cooper's writing about the experiences of Black women, anti-Black racism, economic classism, and gender bias informed Collins's (1990) notion of interlocking structures and Crenshaw's (1991) concept of intersectionality (identifying the multiple oppressions experienced by Black women). Crenshaw's discussion of the multiple oppressions facing Black women and how they are ignored in the judicial system as well as society continues to speak to me. Crenshaw (2021) has been an outspoken critic of the failure of the republic to live up to its values, writing ‘whiteness—not a simplistic racial categorization, but a deeply structured relationship to social coercion and group entitlement—remains a vibrant dimension of power in America’ (para. 5). In the United States and globally, people adopt a critical literacy perspective as they engage text to transform dis/misinformation about ideologies past, present, and future.

EQ: More recently, we continue to wrestle with increasing scholarship on racialization as an outcome of critical literacy while battling backlash at the same time in the form of a ban on Critical Race Theory, books, and science in what many view as a post-truth era. How can scholars and educators engage—nationally and internationally—with racialization as a function of critical literacy to collaboratively acknowledge and address diversity and difference while also producing change?

Concepts that underpin Black Lives Matter, CRT, and Woke, for instance, emerged out of Black experiences and suffering to economically express a deep and historical understanding of anti-Black racism and oppression in the United States. Black Lives Matter was coined in 2013, by Garza, Cullors, and Tometi n.d.) following the death of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman. Baptise (2021) submits that the co-option of Black language is an old racist tactic whose goal is to ‘take a radical message and muddle it enough until it means its opposite’ (para. 2). She tracks how Black language has been appropriated as a way of ‘reminding Black people of their place in society’ (para 8). Critical Race Theory emerged out of the scholarship of Derrick Bell (1980, 1995), and Bunyasi and Smith (2019) began using an old Black term (originally used in 1923) to express the importance of being ever-vigilant after the unjust murders of Black people in the United States. As the world reacted to the murder of George Floyd to contest the devaluing of Black lives and to demand equality, there was swift White backlash.

Sadly, vulgarised versions of each concept have become political flashpoints and weaponized euphemisms for anti-Black racism, from local school board meetings to political campaign ads as ‘They're flipped on their head, turned inside out, repurposed to sneer at the people they were meant to rally, and generally made to seem comical and ridiculous—a rhetorical minstrel act’ (Baptise, 2021, para 3). Politicised actions, events, and statements reflect White hegemonic discourses that also permeate educational and political discussions about education crises and reform and are re-messaged as solutions while obfuscating educational inequity. We witnessed systems of oppression by the media and politicians, who intentionally or ignorantly co-opted, misappropriated, and profited from Black language when marketed to foment hate and racial division.

Opponents have countered his argument is ‘an attempt to obscure the issue’ (Crenshaw, quoted in Jackson, 2021, para. 3). They quickly point out that ‘the chronic failure to confront the monsters of our past is not destiny; it's a daily choice to accept American myth in the face of so much countervailing evidence’ (Crenshaw, 2021, para. 12). From a critical literacy perspective, Rufo's attempt to appear ecumenical belies his aggressive push to instantiate White supremacy as the foundation of US education, history, and nation building. Most educators are aware that critical race theory is a legal concept not taught in P-12 and rarely taught in graduate and undergraduate courses (the concept has been applied to education by Ladson-Billings and Tate, 1995, as a lens to better understand the role of systemic racism in the field). The zest to adopt anti-CRT laws is part of the backlash following the global support of racial justice and the fear of accurately revealing the history of racism throughout US history.

The word ‘woke’ has been sufficiently fleshed out in Bunyasi and Smith (2019). There has been a deliberate misappropriation of the word woke, for economic and political gain. Beyond the politically inflammatory rhetoric of Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, and his attempt to use the term as an acronym in his Stop W.O.K.E. legislation (the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act), it has become a coded reference to anti-Blackness. Among the most sensational blunders has been the publicly broadcast interview with Bethany Mandel. In the interview with the author, someone who has loudly decried the concept of ‘woke’, a journalist asks her to define what she means by the term. Mandel, who claims to have co-authored an entire chapter about the concept in a recent book, is caught off-guard and struggles to articulate a coherent response. In fact, throughout the brief but painful incident, she voices greater concern about how she will appear on social media than about her incoherent response. Indeed, she received millions of scathing responses to her lack of knowledge and inability to define the term. Unsurprisingly, as the uproar waned, she was privileged to write a response in a popular online periodical, explaining her anxiety and tears (Mandel, 2023). From a critical literacy perspective, the White main/right-wing media discourse feeds into and exacerbates the importance of considering the feelings of White women (the damsel in distress when confronted by the Black female reporter). Throughout Mandel's privileged publication, she does not provide a definition of ‘woke’ and fails to mention that she is profiting from misinformation. No one knows or appears to value the untold damage in the lives of Black and Brown children that her discourse is likely to cause. And, to date, the periodical has not privileged someone with knowledge of the origins of the term woke, to define it for the public.

As scholars who embrace, promote, teach, and conduct critical literacy research, we must not remain silent about racial and social injustice, and we must exercise a commitment to eradicating racism in theory and praxis.

EQ: As you look toward a future for literacy, where and how do you see critical literacy forging a path for ALL students to thrive together in solidarity?

AIW: Foremost among the new pathways that I envisage for critical literacy is building on the intersection of race and linguistic ideologies explored in brilliant discussions of raciolinguistics (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Rosa & Flores, 2017) and Smith's (2022) concept of transraciolinguistics in a global metaverse. These frameworks, among others, make clear linkages among, colonialism, imperialism, linguicide, and White supremacy in the United States and globally, historically and contemporaneously. They point to European imperialism and colonialism as a global issue, not just one in the United States, ever evolving to retain power. It also is critical to recognise what Rosa and Flores (2015) refer to as the ‘co-production’ and ‘co-naturalisation’ of race and language that work to instantiate systems of dominance and oppression.

Menashy and Zakharia (2022) expand on the need for global understandings about race and racism in their research on White ignorance, informed by Charles Stuart Mills's (1997, 2007, 2015) concept of White ignorance. Specifically, they highlight that white ignorance is ‘White misunderstanding, misrepresentation, evasion, and self-deception on matters related to race’ (Mills, 1997, pp. 18–19, quoted in Menashy & Zakharia). The authors' scholarship includes interrogating global education policy because it is often impacted by and modelled after the geopolitical Global North in general and the United States specifically. They note that ‘within global education bodies, racism has been largely considered a US problem, thereby denying White supremacy as a global system. This sanitizing and silencing of racism—or White ignorance—has inhibited structural change in global education policies and practices’ (p. 39). They also acknowledge that race as a social construct is not understood the same way globally; however, everywhere it lingers from histories and contemporary manifestations of global colonialism and imperialism. Menashy and Zakharia submit that ‘racial hierarchy within international development is perpetuated through narratives that have been reframed and sanitized without ascribing the term race to categories that derive from racialized colonial groupings’ (p. 465). Their findings from interviews and document analyses suggest that white global ignorance is willful, as government educational agencies avoid discussions of race, racism, and White supremacy. Many countries evade, ignore, or minimise their own histories and contemporary manifestations of racism. The authors conclude: ‘without addressing global White ignorance, education scholars fail to interrogate a core element to structural global inequities, and policy and advocacy leaders serve to reinscribe power hierarchies at play within the colonial education development industry. (p. 478).

Collectively, researchers, including critical literacy researchers (Mora personal communication, April 2023), are challenging the world to address race and racism globally. Pérez Huber et al. (2023) refer to the avoidance of race as aracialism where ‘analysis … lacks and/or dismisses the consideration of race and racism’ (footnote 2, p. 14). Ironically, it is the very research needed. While it is equally important to continue engagement in critical projects that examine the use of language in text and technology, it is imperative to pursue change in the language, enactment, and enforcement of educational policies to effect racial and social justice.