ABSTRACT
In ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ (1903/1994), W. E. B. Du Bois introduced the term “double consciousness” to describe the African-American experience of “always looking at oneself through the eyes of others”. My pathway through the politics of literacy education – via those culturally vexed institutions of schooling, the academy and government – was one of unintended but then deliberate displacement. I gradually learned the lesson that double or even triple consciousness was a cultural gift from family and kin, generation, culture and place. Seeing the world (and yourself and the institution) through the eyes of others is hardly deficit or disenabling. It is a key to unique epistemological and cultural power, it enables us to generate new strategies and insights for changing theory and practice, and it remains absolutely central to our political struggle to remake schooling for social justice.
