ABSTRACT
Claiming to portray ethnographic narratives is by no means a shared vision, a shared narrative or a shared fantasy. It is an interpretation of a returned gaze to master narratives examining representations and conceptualisations of women as ‘illiterate’. To create ethnographic narratives that are not just descriptive of ‘other realities’ but productive in ‘speaking back’ to relationships of negotiations, between different agencies, and the constructs of gender, literacy and development that inform practice, policy and planning has been a shared and dynamic research agenda.14 As
an ethnographer I do not claim to ‘know’ the ‘illiterate-as-literate’ (Chopra 2001), but rather am attempting to contribute to conversations questioning discursive practices legitimising representations of the ‘illiterate’ woman – as representations of ‘needs’ for the ‘illiterate’. This engagement in itself ‘re-claims’ a process of naming and of imparting knowledge, as an accumulative resource, that renders (in)visible the voice and agency of ‘illiterate’ women.
