Notes on Media Literacy and Illiteracy

Abstract

As an uncritical theoretical presupposition, the notion of literacy has led to formalistic, bookish philosophy. The constipated philosophical discourse adjudged worthwhile by literati and digirati falls historically into a line of dogmatic argument and counterargument within academic tradition submerged in subjective-idealist solipsism, petit-bourgeois political apologetics, and economic escapism. Careerist generalization of literacy from the ability to read print to include metaphoric uses of the term “literacy” to all media, while comfortably foggy to irrationalists, adds little to our understanding of print or other media except by increasing the gloom that prevails among privileged, neo-liberal pettifoggers.