Writing as a Problem: African Grassroots Writing, Economies of Literacy, and Globalization
Author(s)
Blommaert, J.
Abstract
This article analyzes a set of handwritten documents produced by a Burundese asylum seeker in Belgium. The documents are instances of “grassroots writing”: their authorship is collective, & they display considerable problems with “remembering.” They are also rather typical text-artifacts of globalization processes, in which literacy products from one part of the world meet literacy expectations from another part. Two general points are derived from the analysis. (1) The function of documents such as these is not “reading,” but rather a complex of reading, viewing, & decoding. The documents are at least partially VISUAL bearers of information. Such functions need to be investigated ethnographically. (2) The reason for this is the fact that the production & reception of such documents has to be set against the background of widely different economies of literacy. Consequently, the differences between text production & text reception are grounded in worldwide patterns of inequality. This casts doubt on a number of popular theses about the nature of contemporary societies & the role of discourse in late modernity. 7 Figures, 1 Appendix, 57 References. Adapted from the source document.
