ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, I examined writing as a complex technological system that transforms language and thought, and I suggested that written texts are never able to fully represent speech. Instead, writing provides a different medium for translating thought, where the features of text ensure that particular gaps or absences remain. These gaps can be generative interpretive spaces for both readers and writers. This chapter explores the nature of interpretation, the navigation of such spaces. How can writing as a “technology of the self,”2 to borrow Foucault’s words, transform a sense of personal identity or subjectivity? What are some implications for children who are learning to write in school? What do children produce beyond their texts? And, finally, what are some considerations for teachers, when having students engage in writing within a classroom context?
