ABSTRACT
To speak of adult literacy and popular libraries is to speak of the problems of reading and writing: not reading and writing words in and of themselves, as if the reading and writing of words did not imply another reading, anterior to and simultaneous with the first, the reading itself. The critical comprehension of literacy, which involves the equally critical comprehension of reading, demands the critical comprehension of reading, demands the critical comprehension of the library. However, upon speaking of a critical vision, authenticated in a practice of the same critical form of literacy, I not only recognize but also emphasize the existence of a contrary practice, an understanding that, in an essay published a long time ago, I called naive.1
