ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a brief analysis of the instrumentalist approach to literacy and its linkage to cultural reproduction. It explores that the instrumentalist approach to literacy does not only refer to the goal of producing readers who meet the basic requirements of contemporary society but also includes the highest level of literacy found in disciplinary specialism and hyperspecialization. The chapter analyzes how the instrumentalist approach to literacy, even at the highest level of specialism, functions to domesticate the consciousness via a constant disarticulation between the narrow reductionistic reading of one’s field of specialization and the reading of the universe within which one’s specialism is situated. This inability to link the reading of the word with the world, if not combated, will further exacerbate already feeble democratic institutions and the unjust, asymmetrical power relations that characterize the hypocritical nature of contemporary democracies.
