Laminated Assemblage as Becoming: A Flat Cultural Historical Activity Theory Approach to Transliterate Practice and Development

• In Event: 68.059 - Assembling the Assemblage in Literacy Studies

Abstract

Assemblage can signal a radical, flat rethinking of how sociomaterial realities emerge; however, it is often employed (e.g., Brandt & Clinton, 2002) as though given things and people are simply woven together in activity, mediating the microsocial and macrosocial. Latour (2005) strongly rejected micro- and macro- as legitimate categories for society, challenging neo-Platonic notions of ‘global,’ ‘local,’ and ‘things’ (including people). Seeing assemblage as continuous historical becoming has important implications for understanding transliterate practices and development. Here we describe assemblage as becoming and illustrate methodological implications for writing research through two longitudinal case studies.

Extending Voloshinov’s (1973) argument that language is a “fundamentally historical phenomenon,” we suggest a dialogic semiotics that sees all activity as dispersed, historically unfolding materialities. A key corollary is the lamination (Goffman, 1974; Author 4), and thus profound heterogeneity, of people, artifacts, practices, and environments. Recognizing ANT and CHAT’s agreement that activity and agency are mediated and practices are most visible during genesis or disruption (Latour, 1999, 2005; Author 4; Vygotsky, 1999; Wertsch, 1991), a flat CHAT perspective focuses attention on laminated assemblage (Author 4), how times, spaces, objects and people register complex trajectories of becoming.

The first case focuses on Nora, a post-doctorate biologist working on the behavioral neuroendocrinology of birds’ social bonding. Based on life-history and text-based interviews, observations, and texts reaching back to elementary school, the analysis traces how a laminated history of semiotic engagements have formed her ways of being-in-the-world as a biologist. The second case focuses on Patrick, a 17 year-old emerging writer in NYC and participant in a connective, ethnographic study (Author 2) of transcontextual writing development. Tracing genesis and disruption across interviews with Patrick, his peers, and mentors, fieldnotes, and compositions revealed chains of becomings laminated across time-space scales.

Following the actors in laminated assemblages, we encounter a host of becomings, where each element of the assemblage is in flux, open (not finalized), deeply shaped by long histories, and pulled proleptically (not teleologically) by emergent futures. Analysis of Nora becoming a biologist leads to chronotopic scenes not typically figured as science (e.g., bird-watching, musical performance, backstage writing collaborations, childhood encounters with nature texts and pets, the emergence of home science pedagogies in the 1700s, etc.). Analysis of Patrick’s becomings challenge perceptions of writing development as “improvement” at a measured pace; rather, he acted on perceptions of past moments, present interactions, and future anticipated identities simultaneously (Cole, 1996), resulting in distally resonant and influential literacy events. The trajectories we trace in these analyses are a radical departure from dominant stories of enculturation into specialized discourse communities or acquisition of prized literate abilities.

These case studies suggest what comes into view when unmooring the typical fixed gaze of studies that recognize literacy as a social practice only in the immediate details of situated events and settings. A flat CHAT framework for understanding transliteracies development points to laminated assemblage as becoming, to the methodological imperative to trace destabilizing (always becoming) people and texts across time, space, and culturally-marked boundaries.

Authors

• Paul A. Prior, University of Illinois

• Anna Smith, Illinois State University