Multiple Literacies Theory

Multiple Literacies

Multiple Literacies Theory

A Deleuzian Perspective

Diana Masny
Theory
University of Ottawa, Canada
and A Deleuzian Perspective
David R Cole (Eds.)
University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
The essays in this book think through and with Deleuzian concepts in the educational field.
The resultant encounters between concepts such as multiplicity, becoming, habit and affect
Diana Masny and David R Cole (Eds.)
and Multiple Literacies Theory exemplify philosophically inspired and productive thinking.
Paul Patton, Professor of Philosophy, University of New South Wales

Taking one of the most exciting voices of the twentieth century beyond the range of philosophy
and theory this edited volume provides a timely intervention into the problem of literacy.
More than the simple application of Deleuze to the question of reading this stunningly bold
and incisive collection of essays will make all of us think again about what it is to read and
think. Masny and Cole have assembled an impressive range of contributions that will open up
new avenues for research and thinking for years to come.
Claire Colebrook, Department of English Literature, University of Edinburgh

Education is now so littered with ‘literacies’ that the term seems almost disposable – an
empty signifier – but at the same time obsessions with literacy testing have reduced much
literacies research to tiresome debates about the pros and cons of this or that approach
to reading instruction. Exploring more fertile territories, Multiple Literacies Theory stages
a dozen exhilarating encounters between Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical concepts and each

Diana Masny and David R Cole (Eds.)

contributing author’s approach to representing and performing multiplicity in literacies
research. Although I usually avoid metaphors that insinuate violence, I see Multiple Literacies
Theory as an example of what the late Timothy Leary called a ‘transitional meaning-grenade
thrown over the language barricades’ – a weapon of non-destruction that produces an explosion
of possibilities for destabilising conventional wisdoms (including fashionable contemporary
positions coded by terms such as ‘multiliteracies’ and ‘multimodal literacies’), and clearing the
ground for new materialisations of ‘becoming literate’ in conditions of complexity, multiplicity
and uncertainty.
Noel Gough, Foundation Professor of Outdoor and Environmental Education, Director (Learning,
Teaching & International), Faculty of Education, La Trobe University, Australia

SensePublishers
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Multiple Literacies Theory
Multiple Literacies Theory
A Deleuzian Perspective

Diana Masny
University of Ottawa, Canada

David R. Cole
University of Technology, Sydney

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 CONTENTS

PREFACE TO MULTIPLE LITERACIES THEORY vii

Ronald Bogue
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
CHAPTER 1: Introduction To Multiple Literacies Theory: A Deleuzian
Perspective, Diana Masny & David R. Cole 1
CHAPTER 2: Literacies as Becoming: A Child’s Conceptualizations
of Writing Systems, Diana Masny 13
CHAPTER 3: Deleuze, Habit and the Literate Body, Megan Watkins 31
CHAPTER 4: Desire and Rhizome: Affective Literacies in Early
Childhood, Linda Knight 51
CHAPTER 5: Deleuzian Affective Literacy for Teaching Literature:
A Literary Perspective on Multiple Literacies Theory, David R. Cole 63
CHAPTER 6: Affective Literacies, Anna Hickey-Moody
& Robert Haworth 79
CHAPTER 7: Deleuze Pure and Applied Becoming Ethical:
Traversing Towards Ecoliteracy, Inna Semetsky 93
CHAPTER 8: When Worlds Collide: Readings of Self Through a Lens
of Difference, Therese Dufresne 105
CHAPTER 9: Indexing the Multiple: An Autobiographic Account
of Education through the Lens of Deleuze & Guattari, David R. Cole 119
CHAPTER 10: Reading Peace as Text: Multiple Literacies Theory
as a Lens on Learning in LINC, Monica Waterhouse 133
CHAPTER 11: Experimenting with Multiple-Literacies Theories:
Exploration of a New Lens for Policy Analysis, Marziez H. Tafaghodtari 151
CHAPTER 12: MLT as a Minor Poststructuralism of Education,
David R. Cole 167
CHAPTER 13: What’s in a Name?: Multiple Literacies Theory,
Diana Masny 181
CONTRIBUTORS 193

v
 RONALD BOGUE

PREFACE TO MULTIPLE LITERACIES THEORY

Since his death in 1995, well over a hundred books on Deleuze have been
published in English alone. Much of the territory of Deleuze’s complex thought has
been mapped; critical positions have been staked out; sites of contention and
controversy have been established. But what has by no means been clearly
determined is the extent to which Deleuze’s ideas may serve as catalysts in fields
beyond philosophy. Today, much of the most exciting work on Deleuze is coming
from writers, artists, practitioners and scholars in fields as far flung as architecture,
political science, ethnomusicology, social geography and topology. The research
collected in this volume is yet another instance of the creative possibilities that are
emerging as Deleuze’s thought is extended beyond its established precincts.

Deleuze famously compared his books to tool boxes, the various ideas within them
being so many conceptual hammers and saws that readers/artisans might use as
they saw fit. It would be a mistake to assume from this remark that Deleuze’s
concepts are unrelated to one another, but what Deleuze was suggesting with this
metaphor was that his thought is systematic without constituting a closed system,
that his concepts cohere without ceasing to form a multiplicity, and that his ideas
are modes of action rather than representation—ways of doing things rather than
simply classifying them.

Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) makes use of a number of Deleuze’s conceptual

tools and interrelates them in innovative configurations. Most intriguing is MLT’s
integration of Deleuze’s language-oriented, structural study of sense and his more
broadly semiotic work with Guattari—two bodies of thought often judged to be at
odds with one another. The conjunction of the two strains in MLT not only
demonstrates the validity of such a combination, but also affords an efficacious
means of opening the questions of linguistic literacy to other forms of literacy as
well as to broader semiotic practices of both social and material origin.

Among the many key elements of MLT, three are particularly striking. First, MLT
stresses the transformative possibilities inherent in social institutions and their
practices. While recognizing the shaping constraints of macroscopic political,
economic and cultural forces on classrooms, teacher and learners, MLT also insists
on the micro-level negotiations of group interactions that can disturb those
constraints and produce new possibilities for enhancing the learning process.
Second, MLT offers an alternative to a phenomenological model of the experiential
and emotional dimensions of learning. For MLT, analysis of the learning situation
starts not with the subject but with affect, or the power of affecting and being

vii
BOGUE

affected. Affects are relational forces and processes that come into being in open
networks of interaction, and the individuals within those networks are as much
products as producers of those affects, which pass through them and permeate the
context within which they act. Hence, analyses of the personal experiences of
teachers and learners need not decline into solipsistic impressionism but may
engage relational affects among the participants through qualitative yet rigorously
empirical methods. And through such analysis, conceptual and pragmatic tools
may be generated to enhance future relations in the classroom. Finally, MLT
stresses the improvisational nature of learning. The learning context is a dynamic
process of becoming, and as such MLT emphasizes modes of engagement among
learners and teachers that empower learning by making use of the interactions
specific to each situation.

MLT’s creative deployment of Deleuze’s central concepts has generated fresh

readings of them that had lain dormant as vague possibilities before this disciplinary
encounter between philosophy and literacy studies. The first signs of the productivity
of this encounter are evident in this volume, whose contents suggest that its potential
benefits have yet to be exhausted.

Ronald Bogue
University of Georgia
USA.

viii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Diana Masny & David R. Cole would like to acknowledge the excellent work of
Monica Waterhouse, who has helped enormously with the editing of this book.
Monica’s work was facilitated by a grant from the University of Ottawa, Faculty of
Education.

All chapters in this book have been peer reviewed before publication.

ix
 DIANA MASNY & DAVID R. COLE

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION TO MULTIPLE

LITERACIES THEORY
A Deleuzian Perspective

INTRODUCTION

This book comes at a time when literacy has perhaps been overly researched and
theorized around the world. Governments are especially interested in investigating
and collecting data about how their citizens become literate. One might legitimately
ask the question: Why do we need more research and theory about literacy? The
short answer to this question is that we do not need more information about the
processes of literacy. What we do need is work that combines data with a theoretical
frame that makes sense of the diverse literacy practices and complex demographics
of populations through which literacy is now apparent. In poststructural terms, it
could be said that literacy research is an area of ‘over-coding’ (Webb, 2009). This
means that the balance between signification and the content of the signification is
out of phase. For example, the enormous attention that has been given to reading
comprehension in educational research is incongruous with the role that reading
comprehension plays in the educational process. Reading comprehension has been
over-coded by outside bodies solely interested in the results of reading comprehension,
i.e., literacy tests. This volume addresses this situation by going outside of the norm,
and proposing a new way of conceptualizing literacy, Multiple Literacies Theory
(Masny, 2006), combined with data to solidify this view.

WHAT ARE MULTIPLE LITERACIES?

Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT), reading, reading the world and self is a theoretical
framework influenced by the philosophical work of Gilles Deleuze, and the social
theory of Gilles Deleuze with Félix Guattari to underpin the concept of literacy.
The concept of literacy has been much debated, and is a synthetic term that has
come to encompass reading, writing, speaking and listening practices. The idea of
literacy has also expanded and become a serial collocated suffix in new terms such
as media literacy, information literacy, critical literacy, affective literacy, medical
literacy, statistical literacy, technological literacy. This is not the way in which
literacy should be understood in this volume, as Multiple Literacies Theory posits
multiplicity in the conception of literacy from the start, and foregrounds Gilles
Deleuze as the thinker of multiplicities par excellence. Multiple literacies as

D. Masny and D.R. Cole (eds.), Multiple Literacies Theory: A Deleuzian Perspective, 1–11.
© 2009 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
MASNY & COLE

understood in this book are therefore in part a philosophical position that

designates multiplicity as an operating principle for the practices included in
literate communication. Another part of the multiple literacies in this volume is
actual happenings in the world, where real groups and individuals ‘do’ literacy.
This volume therefore needs empirical evidence to uphold the multiplicity that has
been designated from the start as a philosophical proposition. Furthermore, this
book requires sensitive analysis of the evidence that does not over-write ‘real life’
with ideology or assumptions, but teases the designation of multiple literacies from
the evidence with the “ease of an artist and the precision of a scientist” (Deleuze,
1995, p. 29). This collection of chapters ultimately builds a theoretical framework
for literacy as multiple, and collects evidence for this claim through empirical
research.

WHY DELEUZE?

As has been mentioned above, the work of Gilles Deleuze has been chosen to
underpin Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) due to his rethinking about multiplicity.
The critical aspect of his thinking through of multiplicity comes when he expands
the notion of quantitative multiplicities to include qualitative multiplicities (Deleuze
& Guattari, 1987, p. 30). These qualitative multiplicities have the effect of establishing
differences in nature. Henri Bergson undoubtedly heavily influenced Deleuze in this
conception, as Bergson was concerned with thinking through the relationship
between ecological and evolutionary systems and the ways in which these systems
may be represented and conceived in notions of creativity such as the “élan vital”
or “durée” (Deleuze, 1988). Deleuzian multiplicities are therefore simultaneously
numerical and qualitative. They attest to the fact that the harder that one analyses a
concept, idea or notion – the further one is able to differentiate between different
aspects of that ‘unity’. Dualism dissolves in transversality. Dichotomies become
assemblages – dialogue is thought of as a symphony of voices, most of which are
not usually heard or are suppressed due to power concerns. Deleuzian multiplicities
also more closely conform to the processes of change to be found in any system:
Living organisms are autopoietic systems: self-constructing, self-maintaining,
energy-transducing autocatalytic entities. They are also systems capable of
evolving by variation and natural selection: they are self-reproducing entities,
whose forms and functions are adapted to their environment and reflect the
composition and history of an ecosystem (Harold, 2001, p. 232).
The problem in education is that systems are often designated as being closed or
finite. For example, primary literacy development can take on a linear aspect in
curriculum and syllabus documents that list different stages in reading, writing,
spelling and oral language (Annadale, Bindon, Handley, Johnston, Lockett &
Lynch, 2004). Yet educators know that linear development in literacy skills is a
myth, and that students develop at different rates, depending upon certain internal
and environmental triggers. Students may find the activities of the classroom
exceedingly dull and not develop their literacy skills, even though they are fully
capable of engagement. The same students may at another time find the classroom

2
 INTRODUCTION TO MLT

environment and activities extremely interesting and suddenly take off in their
desire to read, write and communicate. Multiple Literacies Theory recognises this
disparity, and designates multiplicity at the heart of literate communication.
Developmental charts may be comforting and provide solace for the spectator who
needs a clear progressive story in terms of understanding the way literacy works.
Yet these myths are far from the truth. Using Deleuzian multiplicities to underpin
literacy theory points to the ways in which communication abilities form feedback
loops and aggregate in internal and external ways. These changes in nature are
qualitative and chaotic, time based and spatially inferential. This book looks to
chart these changes and provide guidance for educators who wish to understand
multiple changes in literacy, and the factors involved with these changes that will
influence their planning, classroom management and assessment principles.

THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DELEUZE, AND DELEUZE & GUATTARI

Gilles Deleuze wrote about the history of philosophy, cinema, and theoretical
treatises called Difference & Repetition and The Logic of Sense. These works are
markedly different from his combined writings with Félix Guattari. Working with
Guattari opened Deleuze up to new ways of thinking and a spontaneous and joyful
approach to theorization. Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) keeps the best of both
‘Deleuzes’ to enable a fuller understanding of the multiple in literacy study. For
example, qualitative multiplicities are certainly a powerful and important philo-
sophical concept, designed to provide clues for thinking about changes in nature in
education and the ways in which communication is a non-linear process. Yet there
are also social consequences in designating multiplicity at the heart of literate
activity. In their first combined work, Anti Oedipus, Freud and Marx were blended
by Deleuze and Guattari (1984) to create a critique of the ways in which bourgeois
European society has projected images of itself and attempted to reconcile these
images through synthesis and economic activity. In the series of essays entitled, A
Thousand Plateaus, this blending is taken to another level and increased numbers
of scientific and artistic positions are incorporated into the analysis to understand
the developing relationship between capitalism and schizophrenia. All this could
take us a very long way from understanding how students become literate. Yet the
processes and reversals, flips and knots, jokes and false pathways do resonate with
the ways in which literacy has itself gone beyond simple definition. Today children
may be sat in front of televisions at home and imbibe the contents of cable television
and this will certainly affect their communication skills and resultant literacies.
Conversely, teachers and students may be determined in their educational practice
by the use of literacy benchmarks that are standardized tests designed to provide
literacy information for external bodies. The concept of literacy is therefore a
highly convoluted construction, especially when one considers its societal con-
sequences. The proposition of this volume, and Multiple Literacies Theory, is that
the use of Deleuze’s central philosophical ideas, combined with the social theory of
Deleuze and Guattari, takes us closer to understanding how literacy is presently
constructed.

3
MASNY & COLE

MULTIPLE LITERACIES THEORY (MLT) AND MULTILITERACIES

One might perceive a distinct similarity between Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT)
and multiliteracies as has been theorized by the New London Group (1996). Multi-
literacies was conceived by the group to incorporate the ways in which literacy is
changing in contemporary society with the need for social justice in pluralistic,
multilicultural contexts. This convergence of changing literacy landscapes and
unstable demographics neatly sums up the educational environment in countries
such as the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as
other industrialized countries where the teaching of English is as a second
language. At the heart of the mutiliteracies framework is a concern for design, and
a specific focus on designing social futures that are equitable and inclusive. This
central conception of design in multiliteracies may be built upon and makes up the
multimodality of textual use – that includes gestural, spatial, audio, visual and
linguistic meaning. Such multimodality is especially pertinent when one considers
the construction of electronic text, in, for example, the Internet. Yet one should not
mistake this mode of operation with the social/cultural consequences of multi-
modality, that have been drawn out in recent times by work on the ‘new literacies’
(Lankshear & Knobel, 2003). The new literacies movement has been busy since
the designation of Multiliteracies as a manner of explaining the contemporary
explosion in literacies that has been primarily mediated through the application of
digital technology to communication processes. The new literacies ‘map’ emerging
literacies that are connected in complicated and entangled ways through the social
lives of the students and in the relationships between official school communication,
and out of school, tacit and group codes that are often not recognized in the official
curriculum, for example, SMS messaging and social web sites such as Facebook.
This is where multiliteracies and new literacies substantially differ from Multiple
Literacies Theory (MLT). In summary these differences may be explained as:
Multiliteracies is philosophically based in phenomenology (Cope & Kalantzis,
2000), whereas MLT is based in transcendental materialism (Deleuze & Guattari,
1987). Whilst this philosophical difference between the two approaches may seem
to be trivial when one is teaching or learning literacy, it has profound effects for
both systems. The multiliteracies framework argues that the social agenda for
literacy should be in experience. MLT would counter that the social agenda of
literacy is in the many aspects of life that flow through the subject and that
constitute memories, desire and the mind. As such, experience is extremely difficult
to render as a stable category when examining exactly what aspects of life determine
literacy learning according to MLT. The philosophy of multiliteracies maintains
the stable category of experience, especially when contrasting its construction of
literacy with respect to previous iterations of literacy that relied heavily on print
literacy practices. Multiliteracies says that the study of the media, which should be
included in the design of new literacy curricula, dominates new literacy learning
experiences. MLT accepts media influence as an important aspect of current
literacy studies, yet would not posit this influence as an over riding or meta-
narrative that might disrupt the primacy of qualitative multiplicities.
Technology is of fundamental importance in multiliteracies, and this theoretical
frame has led to the present diversity of technological and digital literacies that are

4
 INTRODUCTION TO MLT

being charted through the new literacies. In the MLT frame, technological mediation
is of equal importance with every other contemporary literacy practice. The use of
multiliteracies encourages literacy teachers to engage with technology in every
aspect of the literacy-learning program, as it prepares students for the technological
and global workplace (Cope & Kalantzis, 1995). MLT examines and incorporates
technology wherever necessary, but does not make technological affordances
dominant or a singular concern that might prelude more primitive ways of working
in literacy, to be found, for example in the distribution of affect.
Power is distributed differently in MLT and in contrast to the multiliteracies
model of literate behavior. In MLT the emphasis on power flows very much from
local interactions that cause changes and transformations in micro-systems that
direct power from the bottom-up and into macro-systems through various processes
such as the rhizome or the machinic phylum. In multiliteracies, the focus on
intelligent design is spread as a system property that guides all participants to work
towards the globalization of literate behaviors and ultimately feeds into the power
of corporate or governmental organization (if perhaps unknowingly). This is
because design is a way of rationalizing behavior, and valuing literate performance
as work: i.e. producing marking criteria that evaluate the design base of literacy.
MLT as a means to assessing literate progress includes non-organized modes of
becoming literate that are not open to the same power concerns as rational design,
for example, the notion of desire and collective enunciation.
Multiliteracies encourage communities of learners through design, whereas
MLT promotes action in learning. This action may come together in terms of a
specified community, such as the French speaking educational communities of
Canada, yet the actions and connections between actions that MLT produces are
disparate and complex, and are not defined by any preconceived agenda. The
meaning that one may take from MLT action learning is invariably communal
(Goodchild, 1996); however, these meanings are not fixed in a standard western
democratic or civil direction, as is the case with multiliteracies. MLT has the
potential to be taken up by a plethora of communities as it deals with the issues of
multiplicity that are at the core of their literate progress. A good example to
illustrate this point is the situation of Aboriginal communities in Australia, and the
struggle to keep their cultures alive.
Creativity takes on a fundamentally different orientation and focus in MLT and
multiliteracies. MLT relies on the random collisions of affects (Parisi, 2004) that
one might find in the teaching and learning context, whereas multiliteracies prioritize
organized and structured projects that are the outcome of designing social futures.
The application of multiliteracies in educational contexts may lead to interdiscip-
linary curriculum methods that encourage students to think holistically and to link
knowledge areas through, for example, ICT software. MLT works through local
knowledge to produce moments of inspiration, experimentation, critique and art
(Deleuze, 1995).
Otherness, strangeness and alienation are included as parts of the MLT system,
as they may be explored through personal literacy (Fiumara, 2001) and affect.
Furthermore, difference in literacy practice is established in kind through MLT via

5
MASNY & COLE

the use of qualitative multiplicities that make apparent the workings of the creative
unconscious as a powerful driving force in becoming literate. Multiliteracies will
tend to shut out such considerations through communities of practice working
towards pre-defined social goals and coordinated design – even though the place-
ment of critical literacy in the multiliteracies frame does signal a critical evaluation
of which voices are being prioritized through literacy.

THE CONTENTS OF THE BOOK

This book brings together the work of researchers from Australia, Canada and the
United States who link their studies in education to Deleuze and to Multiple
Literacies Theory (MLT). MLT may be understood through Masny’s (2006)
headline literacy dictum as: Reading, Reading the World and Reading the Self and
is positioned here as a new way to conceptualize literacy based on the work of
Gilles Deleuze. Multiple Literacies Theory is a framework and lens for understanding
empirical evidence that consists of words, gestures, attitudes, speaking, writing,
and valuing; and ultimately examines the processes and manners in which these
literate behaviors come together through becoming with the world. Literacies may
also be thought of as texts that express multiple meanings and are taken up as
visual, oral, written, and tactile located in local contexts. Literacies as multiple
constitute texts in a broad sense – i.e. music, art, physics, and mathematics.
Multiple literacies fuse with socio-political, cultural, economic, political, gendered
and racialized groups through practices that may be studied in schools or in the
community. This is the process through which literacies are coded, and in the
context of literacy research, has been over-coded as governments have poured
funding into understanding the ways in which children become literate. The
contexts for literacy research are however not static. The dynamics of local literate
behaviors are fluid and transform literacies themselves and produce speakers,
writers, artists, and new communities of practice that innovate on any established
ways of becoming literate. In short, one might say that literacies – e.g. personal,
critical, community, and school-based are about reading, reading the world, and
reading the self as texts. This volume has been organized into chapters that
illustrate these processes and ways of becoming literate in the world:
In chapter two, Diana Masny is interested in exploring children’s’ understanding
of writing systems when they are acquiring more than one system simultaneously.
The case study of writing acquisition that is included in this chapter is the context
to examine the central theme of MLT that is becoming. Questions that this chapter
confronts include: How do reading, reading the world and reading the self
transform becoming in the processes of learning writing systems? As primogenitor
of MLT, Masny shows how to join theory with practice. The case study of this
chapter provides a platform to understand MLT, and the ways in which it may be
used by researchers to extract the intricate influences that shape and form literacy.
The girl in the study is simultaneously involved with three languages, and Masny
looks at how she is negotiating the differences in these languages as well as her
own emotions and processes of socialization and schooling.

6
 INTRODUCTION TO MLT

Chapter three is by Megan Watkins, and is called, Deleuze, Habit and the
Literate Body. In this chapter, the view of literacy as a cognitive ability is placed
under erasure. This is because motor capacities such as posture, bodily composure
and sustained concentration are tied to the notion of bodily literacy through the use
of notions taken from continental philosophy such as the habitus. Literacy
pedagogy tends to neglect the necessary training of the body in perfecting these
skills by over emphasizing linguistic priorities. Watkins explores the enabling
potential of habit in learning to write through several case studies. Becoming
literate in these studies is predicated on habituation, in Deleuzian terms, which is
the embodiment of skills whereby they no longer receive conscious attention but
simply provide the means by which we are enabled to write. Watkins broadens the
notion of Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) to incorporate bodily literacy into the
ways in which a literate body must habituate a range of skills to not only ensure the
efficient production of text but its creative manipulation. While much of learning to
write implicates the body, the corporeality of the process is generally given little
attention in literacy research.
Linda Knight constructed the next chapter, Desire and Rhizome: Affective
Literacies in Early Childhood, and through this writing she positions young children
as desiring machines. This conception is a deliberate move to make explicit certain
relationships in educational thought such as passionate engagement and how thin-
king is processed and communicated. The discussion in this chapter uses rhizomatic
connectivity and referencing in relation to MLT, and focuses on the inherent
relationships in early childhood drawing. Drawings undertaken by young children
act as empirical evidence and assist in exploring and detailing concepts of the
desiring-machine and the rhizome. Knight is interested in exploring how such
concepts have important implications for early childhood teaching and learning;
particularly in subverting dominant early childhood education discourses of desire
and communication. This chapter also has the effect of producing affective
literacies for use in early childhood education. These affective literacies help us to
understand how young children process information and learn to draw in a creative
and spontaneous manner.
David R. Cole wrote chapter five, Deleuzian Affective Literacy for Teaching
Literature: A Literary Perspective in MLT. He changes the focus from the previous
three chapters and the early childhood data to the teaching of literature. This piece
of writing positions Deleuzian affective literacy as a practice for teachers of
literature that uses affect positively to enhance textual practice. Deleuze came back
to the notion of affect throughout his career, and as such it is a powerful
philosophical thread that one might extract from his oeuvre. Affect also acts as an
important part of MLT as multiple literacies theory must include a connection to a
means of education, whereby pragmatic goals may be realized. Cole’s chapter
shows how Deleuzian affect may be put to work in the classroom as an organizing
principle for teaching literature, and as a means to establishing emotional pedagogy
without recourse to personalization or subjectification. This outcome is due in part
to the choice of text to be used by teachers employing Deleuzian affective literacy
in their work and the ways in which text will be manipulated according to

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MASNY & COLE

Deleuzian notions that one may draw out from affect such as literate becoming and
literate desire. This chapter includes examples of texts that may be profitably used
by teachers of literature wishing to employ Deleuze in their teaching, and the ways
in which these texts can be taught in unison with Deleuzian affective literacy.
Anna Hickey-Moody and Robert Haworth co-authored chapter six, Affective
Literacies that focuses on emergent, radical literacies through the theoretical lens
of Deleuze, and Deleuze and Guattari’s theories of affect and the smith. The
authors relate this perspective to MLT and the role community literacy can play in
resisting state power and intervention. The writers are interested in sites of learning
that demonstrate activism against dominant or assumed knowledges. Hickey-
Moody and Haworth argue that there are holes in totalizing state systems from
which affective economies emerge that are brokered by smiths. Such affective,
kinesthetic systems are pedagogical in that they teach emergent, radical literacies.
While affect may refer to different philosophical and psychological notions, the
authors apply the concept of affectus in exploring three vignettes, or situated case
studies of relational knowledge production, which are embedded within American
and Australian youth counter-cultures. Through the concept of affect, these three
sites are each readable as modes of shaping participants’ literacy practices and
ways of becoming subjects while at the same time facilitating the creation of new
literacy practices and economies of cultural production. The implications are that
cultural and political literacies can be broadly understood as being taught and
learnt through affective economies.
In the following chapter, Inna Semetsky focuses on Traversing Towards
Ecoliteracy in relation to Deleuze’s philosophy, educational theory and MLT. She
argues for ecoliteracy as a way to reconceptualise education embedded in lived
experience which is qualified by three lines of flight: critical, clinical and creative –
and that together form becoming-ethical. Ecoliteracy in education can only be
achieved by traversing towards the three C’s according to Semetsky. The drawing
out of Deleuze’s informal pedagogical model is helpful in bringing the oft-cited yet
missing element of values in education that should be understood in terms of
becoming-other and becoming-ethical. Semetsky uses her in depth knowledge of
Deleuzian philosophy to skillfully blend together elements of his thought to the
benefit of an enhanced educational practice. This enhanced practice, in a similar
way to the previous two chapters, points to an educational future that might use the
philosophy of Gilles Deleuze to connect local concerns with global pronounce-
ments to be found in policy and curriculum statements. The point of doing this
work here is to set up the grounds through which educationalists may include
affective and ecoliteracies within an MLT frame.
Therese Dufresne extends this argument and examines the concept of Readings
of Self within MLT in chapter eight. Through her work with two children, Mathieu
and Andrew, this chapter offers a conceptual framework for the Readings of self.
The writing in this chapter addresses how children in multilingual contexts concept-
tualize language, and how such conceptualizations and perceptions contribute to
learning and MLT. Dufresne explores linear and non-linear forms of teaching and
learning and demonstrates that learners can be in a situation to succeed if we are
willing to recognize the unpredictable nature of teaching and learning and the

8
 INTRODUCTION TO MLT

openness of school systems to advocate for non-linearity. The author also uses
innovative writing strategies to illustrate these points and draws on her experience
as an educator as well as an educational researcher. This chapter gives force to the
argument that the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze may be employed to transform
education. Dufresne shows how many misunderstandings in education may be
resolved through attention to the behaviors and explanations of these behaviors
using MLT. The examples in this chapter make sense of this procedure and add to
the weight behind the call to incorporate MLT into mainstream educational
practice and policy.
David R Cole put together chapter nine that is entitled, Indexing the Multiple:
An Autobiographic Account of Education Through the Lens of Deleuze and Guattari.
This chapter picks up in many ways on points made in the previous section as it
provides a close reading of the self. The self under scrutiny is the writer of the
chapter who was teaching in secondary inner city contexts in the UK. This experience
is the powerful underpinning for the theorization of the chapter that uses the work
of Deleuze and Guattari, and in particular, their thesis entitled Anti Oedipus. The
author takes up theoretical aspects of Anti Oedipus to understand the processes and
practices that were apparent in the contexts of a UK school. In particular, the
relationships between teachers and students, the organization of the lessons, the
atmosphere of the school, the ways in which authority is distributed and understood
are all analyzed in this chapter. The author also uses evidence taken from literary
works to enhance the reading of the self, and he makes an index of the sections in
the chapter to add to the MLT frame. This chapter is a synthesis of educational
experience, poststructural theory and MLT in an organizing index.
Chapter ten, Reading Peace as Text: Multiple Literacies Theory as a Lens on
Learning in LINC takes us away from mainstream educational practice and brings
us into the world of adults attending language instruction classes for newcomers to
Canada (LINC). Monica Waterhouse is interested in how investment in multiple
literacies produces transformations in the context of the LINC program. She
explores how adult immigrants take up reading, reading the world and self.
Waterhouse is also interested in what investment in multiple literacies produces:
this investment is resolved through reading peace, reading world, reading self –
and the processes of becoming through difference. In this chapter, peace is
deterritorialized as Waterhouse undertakes an intensive and immanent reading in
her study of reading peace as text in the process of immigrant adults acquiring
English language literacies. This chapter includes a case study, which is broken up
into vignettes that illustrate the concepts and processes that are being theorized.
The vignettes are recorded conversations between the researcher and the
participants in the language classes that demonstrate the political significance of
applying MLT to reading peace as a text. The concept of peace has already been
broken down by the participants in the study, and is unpacked by them as they
speak to the researcher.
In chapter eleven, Experimenting with Multiple Literacies Theory: Exploration
of a New Lens for Policy Analysis, Marzieh Tafaghodtari explores a class of
English as a second language (ESL) adult-learners at university. The author begins

9
MASNY & COLE

her chapter with a brief history of competing notions of literacy and the current
emphasis on functional literacy that prevails in ESL courses. The study that is
detailed in this chapter brings the researcher to this class to examine how program
policies support or interact with literacy orientations; i.e., the value that is placed
on literacy and multiple forms of literacy and how the subject position is produced
in the policy texts. In her study, Tafaghodtari illustrates how a functional orientation
towards literacy might fall short of understanding learners’ critical engagement in
sense making processes. MLT opens up avenues for uncovering creative processes
that are involved in sense making and literacy experiences. The author of this chapter
also provides clues as to how one might understand MLT as a type of semiotics that
can be used to interrogate literate moments in the lives of ESL students. This
process is in contrast to policy documents that designate descriptors and progress
statements without reference to moments in the lives of the students. This chapter
shows how MLT is a framework to enable real language events in the lives of
students to explain their progress in language learning.
The next chapter of this volume is called, MLT as a Minor Poststructuralism of
Education. David R. Cole uses Deleuze and Guattari’s combined writing on Kafka
to provide a platform for understanding MLT. This chapter explains the significance
of defining MLT as a type of poststructuralism, and how this relates to education.
Deleuze and Guattari explore how writing in the manner of Kafka, who constructed
stories in terms of the worries and fears of his characters, opens up literary and
social questions. These questions are answered from the perspective of a minor
philosophy, and this has consequences for educational research, that is a vital aspect
of MLT. This chapter shows how social questions of identity and representation are
dealt with by positing MLT as a minor postructuralism of education. For example,
the position of teachers and learners are explored through this lens, as well as
Oedipal influence in education and the machinic qualities of post-industrial educational
practice. This chapter puts MLT to work as a positive perspective that encourages
radical change and acts as a challenge to stable formulations of education that act
through concrete or uncritical axioms.
In the final chapter entitled, What’s in a Name Diana Masny has explicated a
number of concepts central to MLT. Some of these concepts include reading, reading
the world, and reading the self. The necessity for including this chapter is to illustrate
how the creation of these concepts works in MLT and is particular to MLT, ways
of becoming with the world.

CONCLUSION

MLT is not a universal solution to literacy problems. Neither is it a theory that

explains every situation in which one might become literate. Yet the application of
Multiple Literacies Theory does act as a means to coming closer to dealing with
the multiplicities of literacies that are present in any communicative arena. Using
the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and the social theory of Deleuze and Guattari,
gives the literacy analyst a new vocabulary and set of conceptual tools through
which they might approach literate behavior.

10
 INTRODUCTION TO MLT

REFERENCES

Annadale, K., Bindon, R., Handley, K., Johnston, A., Lockett, L., & Lynch, P. (2004). Reading map of
development – Second edition addressing current literacy challenges. Port Melbourne: Reed
International Books Australia Pty.
Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures.
South Yarra: Macmillan Publishers.
Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (1995). Productive diversity: Organizational life in the age of civic pluralism
and total globalization. Sydney: Harper Collins.
Deleuze, G. (1988). Bergsonism (C. Boundas, Trans.). New York: Zone Books.
Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations 1972–1990 (M Joughin, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1984). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (R. Hurley, M. Seem,
& H. R. Lane, Trans.). London: The Athlone Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia Part II (B. Massumi,
Trans.). London: Athlone Press.
Fiumara, G. C. (2001). The mind’s affective life; a psychoanalytic and philosophical inquiry. Hove:
Brunner-Routledge.
Goodchild, P. (1996). Deleuze and Guattari: An introduction to the politics of desire. London: Sage
Publications.
Harold, F. M. (2001). The way of the cell: Molecules, organisms and the order of life. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2003). New literacies: Changing knowledge and classroom learning.
Buckingham; Philadelphia: Open University Press.
New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational
Review, 66(1), 60–92.
Masny, D. (2006). Learning and creative processes: a poststructural perspective on language and
multiple literacies. International Journal of Learning, 12, 149–156.
Parisi, L. (2004). Abstract sex: Philosophy, bio-technology and the mutations of desire. London: Continuum
Books.
Webb, T. (2009). Teacher assemblage. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Diana Masny
University of Ottawa
Canada

David R. Cole
University of Technology, Sydney
Australia.

11
 DIANA MASNY

CHAPTER 2. LITERACIES AS BECOMING

A Child’s Conceptualizations of Writing Systems1

Literacy is often considered as the ability to read and write. Recently it has also
included numeracy as well as the ability to process information. Up until now, the
type of literacy that has taken hold in the research and teaching of literacy is what
is known as school-based literacy, that is, literacy valued by school and similar
institutions. In this chapter, it is important to unhinge or release literacy from its
privileged position as the printed word valued by institutions by not allowing it to
govern all other literacies2. How can we do this? Through Multiple Literacies Theory
(MLT) as presented in this chapter. In this way, literacies open themselves to what is
not already given. Briefly, developed by Masny (2001, 2005, 2006), MLT refers to
literacies as texts that take on multiple meanings conveyed through words, gestures,
attitudes, ways of speaking, writing, valuing and are taken up as visual, oral, written,
and tactile. They constitute multimodal texts in a broad sense in multimodal forms
in a broad sense that fuse with religion, gender, race, culture, and power. It is how
literacies are coded. These contexts are not static. They are fluid and transform
literacies that produce speakers, writers, artists, communities.
Multiple Literacies is a theory constantly becoming, indeterminate and not fixed as
it continuously undergoes transformations mainly influenced by Deleuze (1990, 1995)
and Deleuze and Guattari (1987, 1994), in particular as MLT ties into such concepts as
desire, subjectivity, difference, investment, reading and deterritorialization.
Through the research presented here, the aim is to create different connections
between languages, literacies and educational practices. If we can conceive under-
standings that permit and encourage different ways of living in the world, can we
consider the case of multiples literacies as ways to provide different and differing
educational opportunities?
This chapter examines how a child acquires two or more writing systems simul-
taneously in order to gain a greater understanding of literacies processes in a bilingual/
multilingual environment. Following a brief introduction, the MLT framework is
presented. Then follows an application of MLT in the form of a case study, a child
age 7, Estrella, who is learning to write. She is proficient in 3 languages Spanish,
French and English. This study foregrounds the concepts of affect, creativity, and
deterritorialization.

MULTIPLE LITERACIES THEORY: A CONCEPTUALIZATION

The concept of literacy has been transformed in many ways. One common element
that has changed is that literacy has become inherently plural, Multiliteracies, New

D. Masny and D.R. Cole (eds.), Multiple Literacies Theory: A Deleuzian Perspective, 13–30.
© 2009 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
MASNY

literacies (Lankshear & Knoble, 2003), New Literacy Studies, Multiple Literacy
Theory (Bloome & Paul, 2006; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Gee, 1999; Kim, 2003,
Kress, 2000; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Lotherington, 2003; Masny, 2005, 2006;
Street, 2003). Before presenting the Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT), I want to
point out that in the research on literacy, important contributions have been advanced
by many in particular New Literacy Studies (NLS) (Barton, Hamilton and Ivanič,
2002; Gee, 1999; Kim, 2003; Street, 1984, 2003; Reder & Davila, 2007) and Multi-
literacies (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000; Jewitt, 2008; Unsworth, 2001). Street would
argue that the NLG perspective differs from the NLS in that it implies a reduction
of the concept of multiliteracies to multimodality (e.g. visual, media, print, etc.)
whereas the NLS’s “emphasis is not so much on the medium as on the practices”
(Street, 1999, p. 38). With regard to MLT and NLS, MLT sees literacies as
ongoing processes whose directions, multiplicities of possible lines of flight, are not
predictable a priori. There will be a transformation, but where it is heading is not
knowable in advance. Rather than literacies as processes, NLS suggests that literacies
are conceptualized in terms of products which, in the case of NLS studies can be
informed by a critical theory stance, usually involve empowerment and emancipatory
outcomes in the Freirean sense.
With regard to MLT and Multiliteracies, Masny and Cole (2007) have argued
that the paradigmatic position held by Multiliteracies is different from the paradigm
espoused by MLT. Multiliteracies are philosophically based in phenomenology
(Cope & Kalantzis, 2000), while MLT is based in transcendental materialism (Deleuze
& Guattari, 1987). While this philosophical difference between the two approaches
may seem to be trivial, it has profound effects for both systems. Multiliteracies
argue that the social agenda for literacy should be in experience. MLT would counter
that the social agenda of literacy is in the many aspects of life that flow through the
subject and constitute memories, desire and the mind. As such, experience is extremely
difficult to render as a stable category when examining which aspects of life determine
literacy learning according to MLT. The philosophy of multiliteracies maintains
the stable category of experience, especially when contrasting its construction of
literacy with respect to previous iterations of literacy that relied heavily on print
literacy practices. It says that the new literacy learning experiences are dominated
by the media, which should be replicated in our design of literacy curricula.

MULTIPLE LITERACIES THEORY (MLT)

Multiple Literacies Theory refers to literacies as a social construct (Masny, 2001).

Literacies take on multiple meanings conveyed through words, gestures, attitudes,
ways of speaking, writing, and valuing. Accordingly, literacies constitute ways of
becoming. Literacies are texts that take on multiple meanings and manifested as visual,
oral, written, and tactile. They constitute texts, in a broad sense (for example, music: a
music score, a symphony; art: sculpture, physics: an equation, architecture: a museum)
that fuse with religion, gender, race, culture, and power, and that produce speakers,
writers, artists, communities. In short, through reading, reading the world, and self
as texts, literacies constitute ways of becoming with the world. The theory allows

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 LITERACIES AS BECOMING

for multiple literacies to become Other than and move beyond, extending, trans-
forming and creating different and differing perspectives of literacies (Masny,
2006). MLT is interested in the flow of experiences of life and events from which
individuals are formed as literate. The meaning of literacies is actualized according
to a particular context in time and in space in which it operates.

Reading, Reading the World, and Self as Texts

Reading is intensive and immanent. To read intensively is to read critically. To read
critically signals that cognitive, social, cultural, and political forces are at work in
reading critically. In so doing, reading critically is reading disruptively, and in
interested and untimely ways. Moreover, because reading happens in untimely
ways, there is no prediction about how reading is taken up. This leads us to reading
as immanence. Take the example of watching a movie. How often do you see a scene
that may transport you to think of what is happening next. Another possibility
might be creating connections with your life and the thought of this happening to
you. Not only is reading untimely but is also is the thought of what could happen.
In this way, reading as sense emerges has a power to become. (for elaboration on
reading, reading the world and self as texts, please refer to chapter 12)

Literacies as Processes
By placing the emphasis on how, the focus is on the nature of literacies as processes.
Current theories on literacies examine literacies as an endpoint, a product. While
MLT acknowledges that books, Internet, equations, and buildings are objects,
sense emerges when relating experiences of life to reading, reading the world, and
self as texts. Accordingly, an important aspect of MLT is focusing on how
literacies intersect in becoming. This is what MLT produces: becoming, that is,
from continuous investments in literacies literate individuals are formed. A person
is a text in continuous becoming. Reading and reading the world through text
influences the text that a person continually becomes (Dufresne and Masny, 2005).
(for elaboration on literacies as processes, please refer to chapter 12)

CASE STUDY

Acquiring literacies involving different writing systems create an environment for

worldviews to collide because of the social, cultural, and political situatedness of
learning literacies. Worldviews collide when different values and beliefs about
language, about literacies are introduced as a result of encounters with other
literacies. Learning literacies do not take place in a progressive linear fashion. In a
Deleuzian way, they happen in response to problems and events that occur in life
experiences. Literacies are not merely about language codes to be learned.
Learning literacies is about desire, about transformation, becoming Other than
through continuous investment in reading, reading the world, and self as texts in
multiple environments (e.g. home, school, community).

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MASNY

The research questions addressed are: (1) How do children perceive competing
writing systems? (2) How do their perceptions of these systems impact their
reading, reading the world, and self?

Methodology
In this section, the MLT framework is the lens used to examine how competing
writing systems in learning a second literacy transform children and become Other
than. Furthermore, putting a line through methodology indicates that the concept
and the term are being deterritorialized and reterritorialized as a rhizomatic process
that does not engage in methodological considerations in a conventional way. It resists
temptations to interpret and ascribe meaning; it avoids conclusions. St. Pierre (2002)
identifies two specific problems with received notions of qualitative data: (1) that
they “must be translated into words so that they can be accounted for and interpreted”
(p. 403); and (2) that they are produced and collected, coded, categorized, analyzed,
and interpreted in a specifically linear fashion. In this study, we find ourselves facing
these same problems as we encounter what St. Pierre has called ‘transgressive data’:
data that escape language and become “uncodable, excessive, out-of-control, out-of
category … [in short] the commonplace meaning of the category, data, no longer
held” (p. 404). At the same time research processes become rhizomatic; the “linear
process is interrupted because the researcher enters this narrative in the middle” (p.
404). Instead rhizoanalysis views data as ‘fluid and in flux’, thus keeping the way
open and working rhizomatic in-betweens to ask what connections may be
happening between multiplicities. Traditional qualitative data analysis becomes
reframed as “rhizomatous map making” (Alvermann, 2000, p. 118).

Participant
Estrella (a pseudonym chosen by the child) was born in Western Canada. Her mother
is Mexican and speaks Spanish while the father speaks Portuguese. At age 2, Estrella
moved to Ottawa with her mother while her father moved to the United States. Her
mother wanted to study French in Ottawa. Meanwhile, Estrella continued to speak
Spanish with her mother, English with her friends and Portuguese with her father.
When time came to register Estrella for school at age 4 (Junior Kindergarten),
Estrella’s mother opted for a French language school (French is the sole language
of instruction). The French language was closer to Spanish structurally than English.

Activities
This study was conducted over a one-year period (2005–2006). Activities include:
(1) observations of literate events in class and at home. (2) interviews with Estrella’s
mother about experiences with multiple literacies and the child’s literate develop-
ment, (3) texts produced by the children, and (4) a photo session (Capiello, 2005)
during which Estrella was given a photo camera and was asked to take photos of
anything that was related to literacies. We showed photos we had taken. They
included a sculpture, musical notes, a newspaper, a logo, and a street sign.

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 LITERACIES AS BECOMING

ANALYSIS – VIGNETTES

Do not look to these vignettes as data and seeking to find concrete proof of trans-
formation. Data in the more traditional way is about empirical data. Deleuze and
Guattari (1994) have moved away from empiricism because it supposes a foundation
grounded on human beings who seek to fix categories and themes. They call upon
transcendental empiricism. It transcends experience (Immanence). It deals with
perceptions and the thought of experience creating connections and becoming
Other than.
The analyses presented at the end of each vignette are informed by the MLT
framework 2002. Square brackets indicate that the utterances are translated from
French. E = Estrella, M = Estrella’s mother, R = researcher.

Vignette 1 – Affect (Desire) & Aesthetic

The children in the class had just visited the renowned Cordon Bleu Culinary
Institute in Ottawa. Then each child in the class wrote a thank you card. Estrella
had decided to do something special because as she said, “Cordon Bleu is very
special”. The virtual potentials of affects are actualized through multiple literacies
as aesthetic figures that are blocs of sensations – percepts and affects. How are
these at work in Estrella’s decorations which she distinguishes from letters? How
are these decorations another mode of thinking, another form of knowledge,
another way of inventing and creating, in short multiple literacies?
R [Writing letters like this, writing your message with special letters] En train
d’écrire des lettres comme ça, écrire ton message avec des lettres spéciales, là.
E [because Cordon Bleu is very special. When something is not special, I do not
write nicely] Parce que le Cordon Bleu est très spécial. Quand quelque chose
est pas spécial, j’écris pas beau.
R [how did you decide to write letters like this] Comment t’as décidé de faire des
lettres comme ça.
E [I had already invented them] Je les avais déjà inventées.
R [You had already invented. Did you use them elsewhere] Est-ce que tu les
avais déjà inventées, les utilisées ailleurs, oui, ok.
E [When I was little] Quand j’étais petite.
R [What were you doing when you were little?] Qu’est-ce que tu faisais quand tu
étais petite ?
E [I would scribble and now I do letters] Je barbouillais, ben maintenant et faisais
les lettres [bruit].
R [Yes,] Oui, ok, d’accord.
E [It was almost always like this and then I did not like it and I stopped] Comme
presque toujours comme ça et eum, moi j’aimais pas ça donc j’ai arrêté.
R [Why?] Pourquoi ?
E [Well, now I do them because I like them now] Ben, maintenant je fais
parce que je les aimes maintenant.
R [You like them now. Are there other times where you use these letters? Do you
do it as well in Spanish] Tu les aimes maintenant, oui ? Est-ce que y’a d’autres
situations où tu as utilisé ces lettres ? Est-ce que tu fais en espagnol aussi ?
E [Only for my mother and my father] Seulement pour ma mère et mon père.

17
MASNY

R [Yes, why] Oui, pourquoi ?

E [Because I like them] Parce que je les aime.
R [Ah, so you do these wonderful letters for those you love?] Ah, alors tu fais ces
belles lettres pour les gens que tu aimes ?
E [Yes when I love, I love no one better than my mother and my father]
Hmmmhmmm, pas rien, j’aime quand, j’aime personne plus que ma mère
et mon père. …
E [these decorations] Des décorations.
R [these decorations? And these are not letters?] Des décorations ? Et ce ne
sont pas des lettres ?
E [No] Non.
R [And what do letters do?] Et qu’est-ce que ça fait les décorations ?
E [It makes that it is very special] Ça fait que ça soit très spécial.
(April 20, 2006 after a Language Arts (French) class)

Multiple Literacies Theory involves creativity and invention in the Deleuzean

sense. Creativity is manifested in an event that produces novel connections,
different assemblages, and becoming (Bonta and Protevi, 2004). The invention of
these special decorations may be read as an actualization of creativity expressed
through multiple literacies. However, if decorations are not letters, not writing,
then what are they? Does their aesthetic quality make them art? Something else?
What would Estrella say? Decorations are nice; they are for nice people in nice
situations. So how do they work? What connections do they make? What kind of
thinking becomes possible? Is the thought of becoming the thought of (immanent)
art? How are these decorations another mode of thinking, another form of
knowledge, another way of inventing and creating, in short multiple literacies?
Flows of desire (as experiences in life that connect) and investment in multiple
literacies produce becoming in untimely ways. Estrella tells us that she “almost
always” scribbled decorations when she was younger and then stopped because she
didn’t like it. She has begun again because now she likes it. Is this how Estrella
expresses becoming other than? Through investment in multiple literacies how is
Estrella transformed?

Vignette 2 – Language Cartographies

In this second vignette we see a deterritorialization of writing. Writing becomes
aesthetic figures, blurring boundaries and writing becomes reterritorialized differently
through multiple literacies. This process of reterritorialization involves a creative
re-mapping of languages (French and Spanish) along aesthetic and narrative lines.
Cartography is about drawing and drawing is about creativity.
R [Do you also write in Spanish?] Est-ce que tu écris aussi en espagnol?
M [Not stories, stories only in French.] Pas les histoires, les histoires juste en
français.
R [Only stories in French. Do you write in Spanish ?] Seulement les histoires en
français. Et qu’est-ce que tu écris en espagnol?
E [Only cards] Seulement des cartes.

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 LITERACIES AS BECOMING

Figure 1. Dear Mommy, I love you with all my heart. This love is bigger than a black hole.

R [Only cards] Seulement des cartes.

E [Cards and messages] Et des cartes et des messages.
R [How is it that you do stories in French and cards in Spanish?] Ah, pourquoi
tu fais des histoires en français pis des cartes en espagnol ?
E [Because I don’t like to write very much in Spanish] Parce que j’aime pas
beaucoup écrire maintenant en espagnol.
R [You don’t like to write in Spanish? How come?] Tu n’aimes pas beaucoup
écrire en espagnol maintenant, oui pourquoi tu dis ça ?
E [Because Spanish is nicer in cards] Parce que l’espagnol c’est plus beau dans
les cartes.

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MASNY

R [Spanish is nicer in cards. How is it that it is nicer in cards?] L’espagnol c’est

plus beau dans les cartes. Ah, oui, qu’est-ce qui fait que c’est beau dans les cartes ?
E [I want to do nice letters in Spanish] Je veux faire des lettres belles en
espagnol, comme les autres.
R [And why is it important that writing a story should be in French?] Et pourquoi
c’est important que pour écrire une histoire il faut que ça soit en français ?
E [Because I like Spanish more when it is nice] Parce que j’aime plus l’espagnol
quand il est beau.
R [You like Spanish more when it is nice] Hmmm, tu aimes l’espagnol quand il
est beau ?
E [With] Avec des.
M [Like little] Comme petites.
R [Ah, this is beautiful!] Ah, c’est joli ça !
E [and this I like, but this is in French because I was in school.] Comme ça
j’aime, ben celle-là c’est en français parce que j’étais dans école.
R [This is in French?] Ça c’est en français ?
E [Yes, well] Oui, ben.
R [What did you write?] Qu’est-ce que tu avais écrit ?
E [I wrote] J’ai écrit.
M [Dear mother. Ah yes it is for Mother’s Day.] Chère maman. Ah, c’est pour
la fête des mères.
R [Ah for Mother’s Day. You did a card in French.] Ah, la fête des mères, tu as
fait une carte en français là.
E [Yes because we were in school] Ouaih, parce qu’on était dans l’école.
R [Ok] Ah, ok.
E [And] Et.
M [She did this day message. It came from her.] Elle m’a fait cette message pour
le jour, c’est de sa partie.
E [It is too late] C’était trop tard.
M [After Mother’s day, she forgot to do a card. So she wrote another card. She
wrote this message. It is half in French and half in Spanish] Oh, après la fête
des mères, elle a oublié de me faire une autre carte, alors elle a écrit cette
message ici, c’est la moitié c’est en espagnol et la moitié cest en français.
R [How is it that you did a card in French and then in English , not in English but
in French and Spanish] Ah, comment ce fait-il que tu as fait en français pis en
anglais, euh, pas anglais, en espagnol et français ?
E [Because I don’t know how to say this. I did not know how to write this nor to
say this in Spanish.] Parce que, je ne sais comment le dire, je savais pas
comment le écrire ni le dire en espagnol.
M [And now again? And why don’t you ask me?] Ah, pas encore, hein ? Et pour
tu ne me demande pas?
E [You were busy dancing.] Tu étais occupée en dansant.
M [Because Mother was busy with folklore dancing] Parce que maman était
occupée avec la danse folklorique.
(June 28, 2006 – home)

How are language territories mapping? From a cartography perspective, French is

associated with school and story-writing that happens there. Other mappings and
connections are made with Spanish linking it to home and the writing of cards for
“special days”, messages of love and thanks, and poems for her parents. But these
territories map over each other as in the case of the mother’s day card written in

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 LITERACIES AS BECOMING

French, because it was written at school. This overlapping of maps also occurs in
the creation of a card half Spanish and half French. According to Estrella, she
wanted to do a card in Spanish but some words she did not know and accordingly
wrote parts in French. This is a creative response to a multiple literacies problem
that presented itself and through this process learning happens.

Figure 2. Cover of card. Spanish: Dear Mommy, I love you.

21
MASNY

From their study, Alvermann and Eakle (2007) showed that school’s ways of
doing involves setting up territories, how one should read, and write. Institutionalized
literacy education is about conventions, closed systems (do and don’t). Their
research pointed out that literacies in school involve setting up territories, just as in
the vignette presented, territories that “serve to mark off and harness the chaos of
the world” (Alvermann and Eakle, 2007, p. 145). But Alvermann and Eakle go on
to show that “after-school spaces … can accommodate, resist, or even provide
escape routes from boundaries set up by schooled literacy” (p. 148). In the case of
Estrella, home experiences provide the environment for opening up writing systems
to produce a card for her mother in both languages. How do multiple literacies
offer Estrella ways to deterritorialize writing systems and reterritorialize them
differently?

Figure 3. Inside of card: Spanish: Hello Mommy, Please excuse me for writing this late.
French: I wish you a nice evening on this mother’s day.

Vignette 3 – Creativity & Invention

In this next vignette we continue to explore the significance of creativity in relation
to MLT. When asked about the name of a dish Estrella made with her mother as a
dessert to follow an Italian-style meal of pizza “mamagachi” becomes an invention
for the dish.

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 LITERACIES AS BECOMING

R [How is it called already?] S’appelle comment déjà ?

E [It is I who invented mamagachi.] C’est moi qui a inventé mamagachi.
R [Your dessert? Mama?] Ton dessert ? Mama ?
E Mamagachi.
R [Yes and what does it mean for you? ] Oui, et qu’est-ce que ça veut dire pour
toi ?
E [Mamagachi. It is a word I invented in Italian.] Mamagachi c’est, c’est j’ai
inventé un mot en italien.
R [You invented a word in Italian. Do you often invent words in Italian?] T’as
inventé un mot en italien, est-ce que tu fais pas inventer souvent des mots en
italien ?
E [Not very much. It is my first time.] Pas beaucoup, c’est ma première fois.
R [It is the first time. Why do you say you invented an Italian word?] C’est la
première fois pis pourquoi tu as dis que t’as inventé un mot en italien?
M [There was a young lady who took care of her for a year. They were Italian.
But Estrella heard some words.] Il avait une Mademoiselle, une Madame qui
s’occupait d’elle pendant une année, ils sont italiens, alors elle il parlait avec
ses enfants en italien, mais Estrella a entendu quelques mots.
R [Come Estrella, I am curious, you said this was an Italian word] Viens, Estrella,
je suis curieuse, ici, tu as dis que c’était un mot en italien, n’est-ce pas ?
E [Yes] Oui.
R [And I thought to myself that perhaps this is a Spanish word. How do you
know that it is an Italian word?] Et pourquoi, parce que moi je me suis dit: «
ben peut-être c’est un mot espagnol », comment tu sais que c’est un mot italien ?
E [Because in Italian, words are so lovely like mangiare. It means eat and it is the
most lovely of all.] Parce que en italien c’est des mots comme tellement beau,
comme beau, comme mangiare, ça veut dire mange etc’est plus beau que tout.
R [It is the most lovely of what?] C’est plus beau que tout, tout quoi ?
E [All the letters] Tous les lettres.
R [Of all the letters, why?] Que tout les lettres, pourquoi ?
M [Spanish] espagnol
R [Tell me, what is it?] Dis-le, c’est quoi ?
E [There are many cocci (coči) words in Italian.] Il y a beaucoup de cocci des
mots en italien, cocci.
R [Yes, will you write a story in Italian?] Oui, est-ce que tu vas écrire une
histoire en italien ?
E [I don’t know how to write in Italian.] Je sais pas comment écrire en italien.
R [You don’t know how to write in Italian?] Tu sais pas comment écrire en italien ?
E [I invented it.] Je l’ai inventé.
R [Ah, you invented it. It is the first time? I suspect that you will continue to
invent. You like to invent (Estrella nods in agreement) All right, we will
continue.] Tu l’as inventé, ah ! C’est la première fois, mais j’ai l’impression
que tu vas en inventer d’autres. Tu aimes ça inventer ? Oui ? Ok, alors on va
continuer.
(June 28, 2006 – Home)

MLT sees how desire feeds creativity enabling the invention of a novel word. A
number of life experiences come together and connect – actual Italian words
Estrella has heard (e.g. mangiare), experiences with her Italian care-giver, her
experiences of how writing systems work, a meal of pizza, a new dessert – to bring

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MASNY

on the thought of… a new word. What else might experimentation with language
through multiple literacies produce?
While there may have been few actual experiences with Italian, drawing on the
virtual creates an event where imagination and creativity flow and invent an
Italian-sounding name for this dessert. The flow of experiences brings on creation
and invention. Is this resistance to the territory of Italian, to the territorialization of
language?

Vignette 4 – Creativity & Invention

In the next three vignettes, Estrella’s language creations break free of all territories
in her own invented language, which she is careful to emphasize, is not imaginary,
but exists in another galaxy.
R [Do you write in another language?] Est-ce que tu écris dans une autre langue ?
E [No, ah yes. I write in a language I invented.] Non, ah oui, j’écris dans une
que j’ai inventée.
R [Ah, yes, tell me about the language you invented.] Ah, oui, parle-moi de ta
langue, t’as inventé une langue ?
E [No, it is me and Mona.] Non, c’est moi et Mona.
R [What is this language? Tell me about it.] Qu’est-ce que c’est cette langue là,
parles-moi en donc.
E Blah blah language. [You want me to tell you?]Tu veux que je t’en parle ?
R [Well, yes.] Ben oui.
E [Ah, it’s difficult.] Ah, c’est difficile.
R [Difficult to talk about it?] Difficile d’en parler ?
E [Ah you want me to write?] Hmmmhmmm, tu veux que j’écris.
R [Well try. Tell me some things in your imaginary language?] Ben essaye, dis-
moi des choses dans ta langue imaginaire.
E [It is not imaginary. It exists.] C’est pas imaginaire, ça existe.
R [Ah, it exists.] Ah, ça existe.
E [In another galaxy.] Dans une autre galaxie.
R [Ok, if you could give me an example. Can you write it for me?] Oh ! Ok, ok,
ben si tu voulais un exemple, est-ce que tu veux me l’écrire ici ? Est-ce que tu
veux écrire quelque chose ?
E [Excuse me, it makes a lot of noise sometimes. Do you remember this
language] Excuse, ça fait trop de bruit des fois. Tu te rappelles de cette langue là ?
R [well, no, I don’t know it.] Ben, non, je connais pas ça.
E [Do you recall when I told you that when I was little I made letters like this
(gesturing) and then like this and like this?]Tu te rappelles quand je t’ai dit que
moi quand j’étais petite je faisais comme ça des lettres, après comme ça, après
comme ça et après comme ça et après comme ça.
R [AH, yes.] Ah, d’accord.
E Je adadad da. [And then I wrote like this and all this.] Et après j’ai écrit comme
ça et tout ça.
R [Well tell me, can you read to me what you have just written.] Ben dis moi,
est-ce que tu peux me lire ce que tu as écrit ici.
E [You won’t like this word. When it is this, it means eum excuse me. It is not a
bad word. But it’s only when people are so ashamed of someone and he talks
and talks and talks and one says “what” and one says keep “quiet” in English.

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 LITERACIES AS BECOMING

Not in another language, it is violent, it is like “keep quiet” (Estrella raises her
voice) ] Tu vas pas aimer ce mot là. Quand c’est ça, ça veut dire, eum, excuse
me, c’est pas un méchant mot, mais c’est juste quand on est tellement quand les
personnes sont tellement [honte] de quelqu’un, il parle, il parle, il parle, et on
dit: « quoi », on dit: « tais-toi !» et ça ça veut dire : « tais-toi » en anglais, mais
dans la langue c’est plus violent, c’est comme : « tais-toi ! »
R [Ok, let’s continue. Read to me what you have written.] Ok, continue, lis-moi
ce que t’as écrit.
E [egrasache se toca se caraje dongisala toca te sara que se singola caci a see
sara que si cholse carise] (approximate transcription of the language from
another galaxy)
(April 19, 2006 – after a math class)

What might the virtual dimensions of multiple literacies produce? In other words,
what may become actualized? This vignette offers one possibility: a language
from another galaxy. Estrella’s perceptions of language are produced as an effect
of experience. Drawing on the virtual, connections happen between experiences
that create a novel assemblage that then may be actualized as language from
another galaxy. How has creativity opened possibilities for invented language?
In this event, language is deterritorialized, escaping Earthly boundaries, and is
reterritorialized, reinvented in another galaxy. However, with each deterritorialization
and reterritorialization event, difference comes into play. Is this what Estrella
expresses when she tells us that the invented language from another galaxy is
different from English? This invented language “is violent” she tells us. How
might this express a resistance to the conventional pragmatics of politeness in other
learning of literacies?
The creation of this language from another galaxy has other deterritorializing
effects as well. In this event, how does creativity produce a reversal, a kind of
deterritorialization, of child and adult roles? How does this invented language
reterritorialize the researcher as the language novice and Estrella as the teacher?
How does this event involving multiple literacies, in turn, effect the transformation
of the learner? What reading of the world and self occurs?

Vignette 5 – Multiple Literacies at Work in Languages: «Extra-Terrestres»

Estrella’s deterritorializations. How does Estrella’s language – extra-terrestres –
actually describe a kind of deterritorialization, outside the earth?
E [I wanted to tell you, you have to guess, how do we say ñ in Spanish?] Je
voulais te dire, il faut que tu [divine], comme, c’est comme, c’est quoi, c’est
comme, comment on dit ñ en espagnol.
R Ñ.
E [This is an extra-terrestrial] Ça c’est un extra-terrestre.
R [Oh, the ñ in Spanish is like an extra-terrestrial?] Ah, comme le ñ en espagnol
c’est comme un extra-terrestre ?
E [Yes, because ñ is an n with a little tail like that (gesturing)] Oui, parce que le ñ
c’est un n avec une petite queue comme ça.
R [What makes it an extra-terrestrial?] Qu’est-ce qui fait que c’est extra-terrestre ?
E [It is the little thing like that (pointing to the tail)] Y’a une petite chosecomme ça.

25
MASNY

R (It is like a tail?) C’est comme une queue là ?

E Hmmm
R [Yes. Are there other extra-terrestrials?] Oui, est-ce qui en a d’autres qui
sont extra-terrestres ?
E [No, only the ñ.] Non, seulement le ñ n.
R [Ok, are there any in English?] Ok, anglais, est-ce qui en a en anglais ?
E [I don’t know.] Eum, je sais pas.
R [No, not in English. I meant in French. Are there any extra-terrestials in
French?] Non, pas en anglais, qu’est-ce que je raconte ? En français, est-ce qui
en a en français des extra-terrestres ?
E [Yes] Oui.
R [Give me some examples.] Donne-moi des exemples.
E [There are so many that I can’t name them all.] Y’en a trop que je peux pas les
dire.
R [Give me a few examples.] Donne-moi quelques exemples.
E [Like, just one?] Comme, juste un ?
R [Yes] Oui.
E [The e.n.t.(Estrella spells out)]. Le e·n·t.
R [Why is it an extra-terrestial?] Et pourquoi c’est un extra-terrestre ?
E [Because sometimes when we count, we can only do like something we have to
write e.n.t and well sometimes it is not pronounced and sometimes when it is
pronounced, it is e.n. But when it is silent it is e.n.t. and if not silent, then just
the t is silent3 *]. Parce que quand des fois quand on compte, on peut juste faire
comme quelque chose, on doit écrire e·n·t, ben des fois ça se prononce pas, des
fois ça se prononce pas le e·n et des fois ça se prononce, mais e·n, mais si c’est
silencieux c’est e·n·t, et sinon c’est t est silencieux.
R [Ok, so when it is silent it is an extra-terrestrial?] Ok, alors quand c’est
silencieux c’est extra-terrestre ?
E [No, it is extra-terrestrial when we can pronounce it because it does not follow
the rules. We can’t pronounce it and at the same time pronounce it.] Non, c’est
extra-terrestre quand c’est quand on le peut prononcer, parce que ça brise les
règlements, on peut pas le prononcer et en même temps on peut le prononcer.
R [Then when we pronounce it, we are not following the rules and it is an extra-
terrestrial?] Alors, quand on le prononce, on brise les règles et c’est un extra-
terrestre?
E Aha.
R [Yes? And where does this come from?] Oui ? Et ça vient d’où ça ?
E [It come from French, from French from another French planet.] Ça vient
du français, du français d’une autre planète français.
(Session with photos, June 8, 2006)

In this study, MLT becomes a lens to consider the ways in which children perceive
competing writing systems and multiple languages. This vignette suggests
connections between MLT and emerging linguistic language awareness in two
languages: Spanish and French.
Particular sounds in both languages appear as extra-terrestrials “parce que ça
brise les règlements.” Experience with these extra-terrestrials has brought on the
thought of rules, but what rules? Are they the conventional rules of French and
Spanish? Are they perceptions of how Spanish and French pronunciation ought to
work? Are they something else? How is “the little thing like a tail” creating a

26
 LITERACIES AS BECOMING

disruption? How does it deterritorialize the rules of Spanish language? Out of this
rupture, what different learning is happening?

Vignette 6 – Desire & Creativity Flowing with Extra-Terrestres!

In this vignette, Estrella tells us more about perceptions of extra-terrestrials and
where they come from.
R [And you will continue to write in Spanish? You like to write in Spanish? Yes?
Do you remember when we talked last time about how Spanish is different
from French and you told me certain sounds were extra-terrestrial? Do you
remember that?] Et tu vas continuer à écrire en espagnol? Tu aimes ça écrire en
espagnol.Oui ? Tu te souviens qu’on avait parlé la dernière fois des comment
l’espagnol était différent du français pis tu m’avais parlé de certains sons et tu
m’avais dit que c’était des extraterrestres. Est-ce que tu te souviens de ça ?
E [Yes]
R [And why did you call them extraterrestrial?] et pourquoi tu as appelé ça des
extraterrestres ?
E Because really, I did not know the word.] Parce que vraiment, je ne connaissais
pas ce mot.
R [So why extra-terrestrial?] alors pourquoi extraterrestres ?
E [Because I did not know it – the others—on the other planets, I think they
invented words like ñ, ch (č) and all that.] Parce que je le connaissais pas —
les autres — dans les autres planètes, je pense qu’ils ont inventés les mots
comme ñ, ch et tout ça.
R [Ok and on this planet what was created?] Ah, ok, pis sur cette planète qu’est-
ce qu’on a crée ?
E [All the others.] Tous les autres.
R [All the others. Then how is it decided that certain sounds are on a certain
planet and other sounds on our planet.] Tous les autres. Alors, qu’est-ce qui fait
que on décide certains sont sur une autre planète et certains sur notre planète?
E [Sometimes, people, astronauts go on the other planets and steal sounds.] Et
des fois les personnes, les astronautes vont dans les autres planètes et volent les
sons.
R [Steal sounds, yes!] Volent les sons, oui !
E [The other sounds and now they have ñ, ch (č), one and all that.] Les autres
sons et maintenant ils ont ñ, ch, un ou et tout ça.
M [But this planet is called Mexico and Spain also.] Mais cette planète s’appelle
Mexique et Espagne aussi.
[laughter]
E [Spain] Espagne.
(June 28, 2006 – home)

In the previous vignette (#5), Estrella explained that extra-terrestrials were those
that broke the rules. However, here she tells us that these sounds are words she
doesn’t know; words that were invented on another planet and then stolen by
astronauts. Language features that do not fit her worldview, “how things work or
how things should work” are destabilizing and deterritorializing. Is it this unfathom-
able difference or “nonrelation” (Dufresne, 2005/2006) that Estrella expresses so
aptly as an extra terrestres? An extra-terrestrial, exterior to a territory, the boundaries

27
MASNY

of her worldview of how Spanish ought to work? There are French extra-
terrestrials as well…

WHERE TO?

This study aims to complicate and disrupt what teaching and learning language and
literacies entail. The vignettes with Estrella in class and at home demonstrate the
awareness of writing systems, the disruptive reading going on in untimely ways
and the thought of how each block of writing led to others and each time, what the
literacies produce: transformation and becoming. Opening up writing systems
opens up lines of creativity. Going beyond the immediate boundaries of texts,
optimizing creativity so that connections made are part of the processes of
transformation and becoming through multiple literacies. Experiences assembled in
and across different contexts are complex and multilayered and contribute to sense
making while reading, reading the world, and self,
There is more to literacy than what continues to inform school practices. Literate
practices are multiple, occurring at home, in school and in the community (Masny,
2005). This study showed how a learner is an effect of continuous investment in
multiple writing systems. This study responds to the call to reformulate research
(Green & Luke, 2006), “to produce different knowledge and to produce knowledge
differently” (St. Pierre, 2002, p. 399) by demonstrating the conceptual, theoretical,
and analytic usefulness of a Deleuzian-Guattarian conceptual framework for
qualitative educational research in language and literacies. It could also enrich
thinking about the complexity of rhizomatic connections and processes involved in
becoming with multiple literacies. Finally, this study offers the possibility of
informing and transforming pedagogies within language and literacies classrooms
and programs based on the notion that learning presupposes an encounter with
something as yet unknown (Semetsky, 2003). Creative processes allow literacies to
move beyond, extend, and transform multiple literacies and learners. This research
provides a different avenue to literacies research.
The Multiple Literacies Theory retained in this chapter becomes a way to
examine how out of complexity and multiplicity, in untimely ways, differences are
continuously transforming in becoming Other than. In the words of Deleuze and
Guattari (1994, p. 169): ‘We are not in the world. We become with the world’. In
the context of this chapter, we become with reading, reading the world, and self as
texts – Multiple Literacies.

NOTES
1
This research was made possible due to a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Heritage Official Languages Support Program.
2
The transformation from literacy to multiple literacies corresponds to a similar conceptual
movement from intelligence to multiple intelligences (Brand, 2006; Gardner, 2006).
3
The point Estrella is raising relates to French verbs. The present tense 3rd person plural of the verb to
walk, marcher, is they walk, ils marchent. The last 3 letters are not pronounced. The gerund form of
the verb is en marchent, while walking. In this case, the letters [en] are pronounced as a nasalized
vowel and [t] is not pronounced.

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DIANA MASNY

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Diana Masny
Faculty of Education,
University of Ottawa

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