Relevance and Critical Literacy
Ultimately, the object of critical literacy (and of the study of literature in general) is to create more thoughtful and reflective humans. Through the study of literature, we hope to expose students to new worlds and, through reading and interpreting these literary worlds, help them become more perceptive readers and interpreters of their own world. As students build the theoretical frameworks described in the previous section, paired texts also offer opportunities for students to exercise their interpretive muscles by applying these abstract schemata to their interpretation of other texts, and, ultimately, the world around them. These intentionally constructed theoretical schemata, originating at the intersection of two texts, prove transferable to other media and to the real world. Thus, literary interpretation emerges from the contrived, passive act cautioned against in the first section and becomes a more authentic and meaningful task that holds value and relevance to students’ lived experiences.
This relevance originates in the active role of the reader cultivated in paired text curricula. Thought not a critical literacy theorist herself, Wilna Meijer’s article On the Relevance of Literature to Life: The Significance of the Act of Reading (2002) resonates with the goals of critical literacy through its model of literary relevance achieved by the actively theorizing reader:
This relevance originates in the active role of the reader cultivated in paired text curricula. Thought not a critical literacy theorist herself, Wilna Meijer’s article On the Relevance of Literature to Life: The Significance of the Act of Reading (2002) resonates with the goals of critical literacy through its model of literary relevance achieved by the actively theorizing reader:
The reader projects his [sic.] possibilities into the text, or, put differently, receives new ways of being from the text, “imaginative variations.” “For what must be interpreted in a text is a proposed world which I could inhabit.” Understanding a literary text means appropriating the world of the text and that means understanding oneself “in front of” the text, in the world it proposes. “It is not a question of imposing upon the text our finite capacity of understanding, but of exposing ourselves to the text and receiving from it an enlarged self…” (571, quotes from Ricoeur, 1988)
In Meijer’s model, even texts that do not resemble the world of the reader can be relevant if the reader is equipped to assume an active role of “[projecting their] possibilities into the text,” and, in turn, “appropriating the world of the text.” In this active to and fro, meaning-making amounts to bridging the gaps separating the world of the text and the world of the reader. This bridging, though, is not done at random, but rather is guided by the theoretical schemata described in the above section (“A Theoretical Framework”).
In Meijer’s model, literary meaning lies in the bridging of these gaps, which she calls “indeterminacies.” She contends that the act of reading can only be made relevant through the active theorizing of the reader:
Indeterminacy is shown to be essential in texts: the things not said… essentially trigger activity on the part of the reader… [it heightens] our own participation… This also explains why rereading yields alternative readings of one and the same text. It is due to the text’s indeterminacies that there is room for change of vision… [This model] emphasizes human openness, plasticity and historicity. Human beings are not simply what they are, they keep on transcending their present ways of being, thus creating new forms of existence. (572)
Theoretical schemata, then, provide new ways to realize the indeterminacies of the text. They provide students the tools to actively make sense of literary worlds and wrestle with the implications these worlds may hold for their lived experience. Within these indeterminacies lies the possibility of manifold interpretations, and so in their indefiniteness they are liberating. The indeterminacies become spaces in which the active reader may assume a variety of perspectives and try out all manner of theoretical schemata in order to derive relevant meaning. Theoretical thinking, then, restores the agency of the reader, who in their pursuit of meaning essentially tries on new “ways of being.” Thus, through actively theoretical reading, each possible interpretation of the text becomes rich with implications for the reader and their world. This model of the actively theorizing reader also illustrates the transferable nature of theoretical schemata: indeterminacies exist between the world of the reader’s lived experience and the countless alternate “worlds” encountered in all texts, regardless of genre or media. This model of meaning-making is essentially applicable to all acts of interpretation, and strives to create active readers of both the world and the word (Freire & Macedo, 1987, quoted in Appleman, 2015). |