ABSTRACT
I commence this genealogical study in Chapter 4 by exploring conceptualisations of security as an effect of government from key Enlightenment thinkers, to the emergence of the concept of human security in the twentieth century. My focus here is to outline the descent of problematizations of security, education and literacy as they emerge across global contexts. In broad terms, this responds to “problems” as they are “represented to be” (Bacchi, 2014) and how these representations have come about. These concerns entail considerations of how problem representations constitute literate subjects for the government of civil society. So, I am interested here in examining how ways of thinking makes it possible to constitute multiple subjects delimited by moral, economic and political worth. And in turn how these (liberal) mentalities delimit the affordance of particular kinds of literacy, whether it be a functional literacy (Street, 2006), a cultural literacy (Donald, 1992; Hunter, 1988, 1994), a measureable skills based literacy (Lingard, 2011), but nevertheless a literacy that secures a citizen that can reason or be reasoned with.
