{"id":64,"date":"2005-09-20T07:33:43","date_gmt":"2005-09-20T11:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/?p=64"},"modified":"2005-09-21T12:49:06","modified_gmt":"2005-09-21T16:49:06","slug":"new-literacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/2005\/09\/20\/new-literacy\/","title":{"rendered":"New Literacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few aspects of The Intuitionist<\/em> caught my attention this week.  After getting past the excessively overt issue of racial inequality, the part I related most to what we have been talking about with Post-modernism is the “new literacy” Lila Mae discovers during her investigation.  Granted, the new literacy to which she refers is based in the fact that she is (at the end of the book) able to “read” Fulton as a “colored” writer and thinker and shaper of society, one of her own, a voice she understands, rather than the same white voice she has had towering over her entire life; however, in light of our discussions of post-modernism, it seems like the idea of “new literacy” or reading something from a new angle\/perspective or even accepting a new form of reading (through such media as television, film, music, the internet, etc.) may be able to reach beyond the obvious racial association.  Perhaps the fact that Lila Mae is able to “understand [a] luminous truth . . . made plain by her new literacy” (230), is suggestive of the possibility of accepting truths in our own world through alternative media, through new literacy – through a new “reading” of the world we know.  Perhaps, in a post-modern effort, Whitehead is using an individual’s racial revelation (something we can understand and to which we can relate because we are not fully removed from it) to represent the possibility for us to find new truths in our own world, by “reading” it from a different perspective.  As Fulton has written himself, “There is another world beyond this one,<\/em>” and as Lila Mae explains, “He was trying to tell them and they wouldn’t hear it.  Don’t believe your eyes” (240).  Again, this brings us back to the perpetual post-modernism question of truth.  Is there a truth, and is it attainable?  Lila Mae seems to think, at first and then again by the end of the story, that there is; it’s just that humankind is not ready for the full “truth” (elevator metaphors aside) or won’t (as happened throughout Fulton’s career and life and as will likely happen throughout hers) understand the “truth,” even when it stands directly in front of them.  That sounds like the start of some post-modern cynicism boiling, and yet ultimately we, along with Lila Mae, are left with a sense of hopeful<\/em>ness at the task she has before her. <\/p>\n

On a second note, what’s up with the role of women in post-modern literature??  That’s a subject for an entirely different post!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few aspects of The Intuitionist caught my attention this week.  After getting past the excessively overt issue of racial inequality, the part I related most to what we have been talking about with Post-modernism is the “new literacy” Lila Mae discovers during her investigation.  Granted, the new literacy to which she refers is based … Continue reading New Literacy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}