ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the discursive construction of the consequences of literacy, specifically of the cultural logic prefigured in the 'doing' of narrative in an early childhood writing lesson. It focuses on discursive displays and procedures for doing and showing narrative rationality in this particular classroom to show how stories are a key moment in gendered social regulation. The chapter considers of the social and political consequences of early literacy training in postmodern conditions. In the Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Lyotard's analysis centres on a reconsideration of the relationships between narrative and scientific knowledge. The chapter reassesses the question of the cognitive and social effects of literacy, and offers an alternative explanation of how the formal introduction to the technology of writing is a moment in the articulation of cultural metanarratives of science, progress and patriarchy.
