Assembling Literacies: Beyond Binaries

Abstract

This chapter establishes the agenda for the book as examining processes and effects of the assembling of literacies and considering how meanings become attached to these assemblages. Its intention is to promote a shift away from binary constructions of literacies as ‘old’ or ‘new’, ‘digital’ or ‘material’, and to encourage critical reflection on the part of readers as to the uses of these, and other, taken-for-granted constructs. It introduces tools of analysis with which to interrogate claims made for the value of literacy innovations and traditions alike. The chapter sets out the book’s argument for alternative literacy histories that are not binarised around old/new values but are rather messy, pluralist, and nonlinear.