ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the methodological and analytical frameworks used in the book. It justifies the adoption of a social constructionist approach, which provides the basis to regard archival documents as evidence of social interaction. The chapter discusses how Foucault’s work can be applied to a study of literacy and illiteracy and explains how his concepts of discourse, power, knowledge, and silence are used in the book. These theoretical conceptualisations identify that discourses relevant to illiteracy will provide explanations and solutions to the condition of being illiterate. They create subject positions and have common objectives of intervention, such as “instilling literacy”. The intersections and convergences of these multi-faceted discourses will in turn influence the formation of new knowledge and new truths about illiteracy and the illiterate person, leading to a continuous dynamic interplay of discourse, knowledge, and truth. The final part of the chapter addresses the ethical aspects related to searching for evidence of illiteracy and the illiterate person. This section also outlines the practical process involved in explicating the discourses and silences evident within the archival data, which in turn facilitated access to “ways of speaking” and “ways of not speaking” about illiteracy and the illiterate person.
