ABSTRACT
This chapter makes an argument for the ongoing importance of critical literacy at a moment when there are mutterings about its being passé. Foucault argues that “discourse is the power which is to be seized” (1980) because he recognizes its ability to produce us as particular kinds of human subjects. In an age where the production of meaning is being democratized by Web 2.0, social networking sites, and portable connectivity, powerful discourses continue to speak to us and to speak through us. We often become unconscious agents of their distribution. At the same time, these new media have been used for disseminating counter-discourses, for mobilizing opposition, for questioning and destabilizing power and, in the Syrian war, for publicizing acts of atrocity. This is the context within which we need to consider the role of critical literacy in education. The second part of the chapter formulates the argument. The 2010 World Press award photograph, together with Said's (1978) analysis of Orientalism as examples of the power of image and discourse, and the “Mountains of Kong” as a metaphor for the power of text and the force of images are all used as evidence that an ability to understand the social effects of texts is important. The last part of the chapter draws on new materials (Janks, Dixon, Ferriera, Granville, & Newfield, 2013), as examples of the kind of work that, I would argue, is still necessary in classrooms around the world.
