In Street’s The New Literacy Studies, the concept of autonomous literacy is brought up. This theory proposes that literacy is independent of social/cultural/economic/political influences, and that literacy defines a huge divide between the literate and the illiterate. While Street rebukes these claims quickly after proposing them, I am still confused on how this theory had such a firm grip among the literacy scholars. We’ve seen this concept in other readings as well, as Goody and Watt were prominent advocates for this theory, which I’ve begun to refer to as the Vacuum Theory. These scholars and their theories are proposing that literacy has nothing to do with the context, with the situation, with the outside world, but instead emerged from a vacuum of time and space.
Let me make this explicitly clear; I am strongly opposed to the Vacuum Theory. I cannot possibly see how that could have happened. Writing came into existence as a direct response to a context, as a means of keeping track of bartered goods. Writing came from a social, economic, and political need. It did not emerge out of nowhere as a suddenly rather helpful technical neutral skill (Street). Nothing can happen in a vacuum, least of all literacy. I am truly glad literacy studies have shifted away from this Vacuum Theory into ideological approach (Street), which analyzes writing as a social act that is never neutral and embedded in context from the get-go.
I sensed a “Mean Girls” reference in the title and laughed! I completely agree that the theory that literacy as a cause or effect totally separate from anything else is really short-sighted. I would even say that pretty much everything we’ve read points to evidence of the opposite–in Kaestle’s lengthy article, the author talks about the literacy trends among new immigrants in the US. Their exposure and absorption to our Western definition of literacy was directly related to demands of life in a new world. It’s far-fetched to claim that something would have had the same effect regardless of the context, but here it’s especially precarious because literacy is so sensitive to interpersonal constructs–it’s an inherently social process, as Street says.