ABSTRACT
Normalization is simply a retreat from any sense of moral and political responsibility. Normalization and any reference supporting it should be seen as an act of political complicity with authoritarianism and condemned outright. Illiteracy is now a scourge and a political tool designed primarily to make war on language, meaning, thinking, and the capacity for critical thought. It has become a form of political repression that discourages a culture of questioning, renders agency as an act of intervention inoperable, and restages power as a mode of domination. Illiteracy provides the foundation for being governed, not how to govern. It is precisely this mode of illiteracy that now constitutes the modus operandi of society that privatizes, depoliticizes, and kills the imagination by poisoning it with falsehoods, consumer fantasies, data loops, and need for instant gratification. This is a mode of manufactured illiteracy and education that has no language for relating the self to public life, social responsibility, or demands of citizenship.
