Wysocki-Eilola, Fisher

(Imagine more creative title here)

    I enjoy very much that Fisher grapples with the idea that technical reason renders the public unreasonable (392) and that knowing 'rational discourse' could potentially shift ones position in society- or the unfortunate contrast of constantly segmenting people into distinct classes (those who 'know' in terms of specialized discourse, like a community's understanding of politics, and those who 'do not know').
    This in particular I found this to communicate well, in limited ways, with Wysocki et al.- though I think we better converse with Wysocki to understand literacy's shift in priority in American culture. The authors dare to provoke the reader to ask: why is literacy so important? To which they go forth boldly and claim:
       "In the United States, we live the mythology of a classless society... In a society bound by such a mythology, our views about literacy are our views about political economy and social opportunity..... Far from engineering freedom, our current approaches to literacy corroborate other social practices that prevent freedom and limit opportunity" (Stuckey vii) (Wysocki et al 354).
Perhaps this importance that has held on to the coattails of the word 'literacy' for so long should be re-purposed, or rather the constitutes in which we understand this discourse needs to be radically shifted. The authors here argue that the paradigm in which we operate as post-modern and technologized (yes, I've made up a word- I'm a writer- I can) human beings has skewed our sense of priority or importance in a world that is now based on progress. As we move with the ever-changing times, I feel the need to ask- is a separation like this, where one class is privileged and one marginalized, anything but sequential?

    As we look back through our history, we can continually see a gap expand between those who are educated- literate- and those who are not. It is not shocking to hear that the literacy levels trend alongside of elevated wealth, which then naturally coordinates with higher social standing. I can only assume, as Wysocki suggests, that our priorities began to shift with the erasure of the first maps and Colonization gave birth to Progress and Modernity.
How quickly we forget our roots. Throughout time, humanity has proven to be interested in engaging with history, fiction, depiction, art..."Man is both in his actions and practice... essentially a story-telling animal"(201)(Fisher 375). Through these stories, we have an opportunity (for those fortunate enough to be literate) to share our lives. We are able to have an immortal voice, and create even a world that is better than our own. I cannot help but be reminded of the incredible story one woman has to offer us, speaking out in a courageous voice that, before her, had been silenced by the thousands.

   The book and autobiographical memoir I, Rigoberta Menchu: an Indian Woman in Guatemala is a retelling of the lifetime of an indigenous Quiche Mayan woman and her family in Guatemala during the military regime. Menchu grew up working her family's antiplano in the mountains, but when their land was disputed by the military, she and her family were forced into working on the coffee plantations where the indigenous were exploited for labor, abused and underpaid- if paid at all. Her father, an advocate against the government, was burned to death by an opposing political party and her brother was publicly tortured and killed by a military firing squad. Her mother- kidnapped, raped, mutilated and then murdered- suffered an equally unjust fate.
    After spending time in hiding (and eventual exile) in Guatemala, Rigoberta, when she was 23 years old, taught herself Spanish so she had a means, a voice at last, to communicate her story and her family and tribe's suffering to the rest of the world. She found a translations expert and dictated her story in her limited Spanish, which was then translated to English and published worldwide. Though she was not literate in the modern sense of the word, it was, and is still language that gives her the freedom she and her people deserve.
In 1992, she was awarded a Nobel Prize "in recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples" (nobelprize.org) 
To learn more, please watch: (Keep in mind the difficulty of translation and that even Spanish here is not her native language) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irvq1CHPAvo

*Though you can skip to Rigoberta at 3:30 (or 7:10 to get past the thank-you's), the introduction is a nice word on the importance of language as a voice for the silenced and marginalized.