The Wing Chair: Where Is the Critical in Literacy?

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum and Culture With(in) Literacy and Language

Abstract

This paper is a theoretical exploration of socio-material theory in the context of critical literacy. “The critical” in this apprehension stands for the urgent and radical, the activist, and liberatory aspects. In literature education, there is always the likelihood of unpredictable critical moments in the student’s encounter with different forms of text situations. The conceptual reasoning behind this paper is illustrated through a narrative about a reading chair in a detention home for young male offenders in Sweden: a place and a meeting where “the critical” takes a new shape and becomes very tangible. The purpose of this paper is to explore where the critical becomes burning and urgent, moral and political, challenging, transformative and liberating in a text situation.

Authors

• Elin Sundström-Sjödin, Mälardalen University

• Ninni Wahlstrom, Linnaeus University