ABSTRACT
In this book, a variety of ethnographers, including myself, are concerned with representations of the ‘illiterate’ subject. This concern is primarily motivated by a desire to understand and explore ‘ways of discovering and observing the uses and meanings of literacy practices to local people themselves…and their relationship to the programmes designed to alter [express] them’ (Street, this volume, p. 1). Sitting (in a fidgety manner) within the frame of this book, I write about ‘illiterate’ subjects, who refuse to be ‘illiterate’ subjects (within a literacy centre and within my ethnographic study) yet remain captured, in my writing, as subjects of literacy. Capturing a person-as-identity relates to two purposes clamouring for reflexivity in my ethnographic research on literacy. The first purpose is to reflect upon the interplay of betrayal and solidarity as an issue for ethnographers, like myself, in re-presentations of people as subjects of literacy. Secondly, my focus on non-attendance in a literacy centre aims to contribute to the efforts of ethnographic research, in this volume, as a way for hearing the voices of ‘illiterate’ subjects.
