A-Literacy and Digital Orality: A Figure/Ground Relation for Our Digital Dilemma

The meaning of any "figure," whether it is a technology, an institution, a communication event, a text, or a body of ideas, cannot be determined if that figure is considered in isolation from the ground or environment in which it operates.The ground provides the context from which the full meaning or significance of a figure emerges.Robert K. Logan, 2016, p. 372 The electri-fried planet sends a jolt through our nerves.We are livid with input and output.B.W. Powe, "Noise of Time" Through the unknown, we'll find the new.Charles Baudelaire and Robert Lowell, "The Voyage", 1963 Due to dominance, electronic media bears transformative potentialities."Literacy and the book", Elena Lamberti (2012) writes, "are literate figures which must adjust to a clear sensorial and environmental change, to a different ground" (p.61).Eric and Marshall McLuhan (1988) note: "the west now bathes in the emotions of post-literacy" (p.4).McLuhan and McLuhan deem post-literacy to be a condition enveloping our experience.A condition brought about through technological advancements jolting, shaping and altering our environment, our sensibilities and our nervous systems.According to B.W Powe (1987), a former student of McLuhan and prominent McLuhan Scholar (yet a self-proclaimed poet first, then scholar), post-literacy is "the condition of semi-literacy, where most people can read and write to some extent, but where a literate sensibility no longer occupies a central position in culture, society, and politics."(p.15)."Post-literacy occurs", according to Powe (1987), "when the ability to comprehend the word decays" (p.15).Occupying a dominant position, occupying our ground: electric light and digital technology.Print technology is no longer ground.Print media no longer facilitates information and knowledge.Therefore, our literary ages' prior established ideological, historical, and socio-political notions no longer hold dominant positions.The power of these notions is in decay.Post-literacy is a condition limiting understanding to the figures of association that are readily available instead of the vast accumulation of literary, historical, and critical precedents.Granted, reading and writing are still a vital part of education and our culture: printed literary texts no longer ground our society's content or consumptive patternsliteracy and literary culture become figures (figures of content) instead of ground.However, the prefix 'post' does imply that our culture has moved on from literacy and reading." [Qualifying] the verb," the Oxford English Dictionary (2023) defines the prefix "post-" as "referring to time or order… with the sense 'afterwards, after, subsequently".In a recent email correspondence between Powe and myself, he revealed, "Now I would use the term a-literacy".Noting, with Blake-like vision and his own (one-of-a-kind) delicate prowess:Some writers unfold from a single point and source, fine-tuning what they say over periods.Some move by stops starts sudden shifts illuminations abrupt breakdown-breakouts.I'm of the latter.I abandon positions.When they don't serve… I'm still exploring.We have reached a frontier when contemplating our current state.Powe's definition, and postliteracy as a demarcating term, implies that literacy was stable, available to all, and collective -this begs a bevy of questions.When were we all literate?What quantity of literacy makes a collective literate?Did we "move on" from literacy?Additionally, is the ability to comprehend the word decaying, or is the English language transforming along with our environment and senses?Or is the ability to comprehend words and concepts decaying while language transforms?A-literacy allows recognition of our transformations without heavy-handed assumptions and potential misreadings bound to the term post-literacy."Electric speed", McLuhan ([1964] 2017) writes, "mingles... the nonliterate with the semiliterate and the postliterate" (p.29), yet such mingling implies a different condition of literacya condition of a-literacy.In the words of Michael Gorman (2003), a-literate people are people who "read what they must and write, if at all, using debased forms such as 'text messaging'" (p.41).A-literate people can read and write well enough.However, these individuals avoid reading and writing as much as possible and do not use typical media (books, newspapers, pens, and typewriters).Reading and writing are now a matter of if/when necessary."This is due to the rise", Daniel Keller (2014) argues, of a culture of acceleration, a gathering of social, educational, economic, and technological forces that reinforce values of speed, efficiency, and change.Literacies are bound up in and tied to these forces, so as these forces influence cultural changes, literacies change with them.(p. 7).Our central nervous system is jolted into hyper-speed, accelerated, and forced to keep up.Reading and writing, a relatively slow and meticulous process, is severely affected and altered."We live in a culture", Keller (2014) writes, "that urges and thrives on speed and efficiency" (p.69).Goals in our a-literate condition are communicative and informative, bound to notions of results and productivitynot nuance and acuity.We aim to achieve goals as fast as possible (Keller,

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