The evaluative reason in literacy and some cracks where to decolonize the writing

Abstract

Facing the installation of new discourses that simply praise alphabetic writing or promote the so-called “grammatization of the world”, these pages are intended to explore at first what could be understood as “the darkest side of alphabetic writing”. For this reason, different sources are used that allow us to see the place of evaluative reason in the spread of modern literacy with its unavoidable colonial face, while, as a counterpart, different perspectives that open poetic cracks in literacy are brought together. In this sense, the power of orality in writing is highlighted so that other literacy horizons (to those established by modernity) can be seen and some decolonizing gestures can be raised from there. Then, the reasons for writing are acknowledged on what it implies in itself or from certain teleology, and an ethical-political dimension of its correctness and incorrectness is investigated. Towards the end, two teaching testimonies are offered that, from what could be two traces of conversation, invite to think about writing in other ways. Finally, the ink ends with a brief inquiry into what a pen can do when the vellicatio is not its destination.