What is Empowerment?

As Flower demonstrates, empowerment is not simply a matter of distribution or attainment.  So much of it has to do with perception, as well.  In a society where domination and oppression seem to conquer most relationships, the problem of empowerment is a serious issue, and a rather delicate one at that.  And for a society that tries to embrace a "colorblind" appearance, and thus consequently avoids confrontation, the struggle to gain (or to maintain, or to display) empowerment can often take on a hostile, defensive, or offensive tinge.  The struggle for empowerment appears to be a real battleground.  In the context of expressivist and cultural-theory approaches, endeavors labeled ""serious and rigorous critical exchange" (128), "aggressive critique [of] the present" (128) "a lightning bolt of critique" (130), "intense personal and political agendas" (130) embody this battlefield persona.  But just as Flower and others point out, an aggressive single sided call against oppression can often exacerbate the situation with which it it is engaging.  Flower says this happens because "in 'speaking up,' we are often in a dialogue with ourselves, our past, our assumptions" (130) and thus neither solicit nor engage in a conversation with the "Others."  This further isolates and alienates the oppressed and does not offer a solution the problem.

Once Flower has identified the problems with various "scripts" of empowerment, she begins to outline what would make an effective theory of empowerment, one that identifies and addresses who is being empowered, to what end, and by what means.  The script adopted by the CLC sought to empower its students to take rhetorical agency, which means, in Flower's words, 1) "taking initiative as a writer to create a negotiated, dialogic understanding of a shared problem," and 2) "to go public with that understanding in live dialogue with an expanding set of communities" (139).  This end-in-view and the approach that the CLC took in accomplishing it lead to some incredible evidence of empowerment in its subjects.  Very encouraging and uplifting, I'm amazed at how a stable environment that gives voice to these kids can make such a big difference in their viewpoints, and thus leads to their attainment of higher aspirations, loftier goals and thus stronger self-worth.  As Flower keeps alluding to throughout the book, literacy is power.  To cultivate literacy in oneself is to strengthen oneself.  To give someone literacy to empower him.  But how do we define literacy?  In the context of the CLC, literacy is the ability to read and write and to communicate with those tools effectively.  But is it oppressive to impose our definition of literacy upon others?  When we command a person to "take initiative as a writer," are we undermining their abilities as speakers or thinkers?  Is it less valuable to implement musical skills or artistic skills as means of communication?

Construction of Conception: Viewpoints of a Literate

Goody's article once again brings up the notion of writing as a technology - something that is not inherent to human cognition, but a tool used to externalize our incomparable and extremely complex human trait - intellect.  Although it seems a superfluous demonstration of the list as an extension of this tool, Goody uses the list to illustrate why oral and "literate" (the definition of which can be extended to encompass both, but in Goody's article seems to be used only as a reference to cultures with writing systems) cultures.  In a nutshell, Goody states that members of the latter group view the world in a completely different way than those who cannot conceptualize the world in terms of "lists".  Us "literate" folk are constantly creating for ourselves lists of the items around us into definite binaries, categorizing tables as furniture, mugs as dishes, dogs as pets, trees as plants and so forth.  It is absolutely impossible for me, as a member of this culture who has been educated with the "text-lists" of the classroom, to even begin to see the world without putting tomatoes in the fruit category and shampoo into that of toiletries.  My house is an incarnate shopping list.

So, this brings to mind the question of how I might view and, consequently, conceptualize my world if I were not a "literate" person.  Would I not see it in as analytical a sense?  Would I lack critical thinking skills?  If it were not for listing, would man not have made it to the moon or theorized physics or philosophy?

These questions are raised again in Scribner and Cole's article, for they explore the link between literacy and "intellectual performance."  Their study of the Vai (a people of northwestern Liberia who have a phonetic writing system sans influence from the Arabic and Roman alphabets) reveals that literacy does not appear to necessarily affect cognitive skills.  Sadly, their findings lead to their conclusion that writing (outside of schools situations) is not as valuable a social practice as we (Americans and westerners) have always seemed to believe.  However, the article does not delve into what differences school writing and pure social writing have on "general mental abilities," which is, I think, the big factor.  Scribner and Cole take great pains to avoid "the confounding influence of schooling," and so seem to answer the bigger question: analytical writing (the "essay" writing of schools) leads to stronger mental abilities, not just simply knowing how to transcribe object of the world to object on the page.  Transcription of thought forces one to slow down, tear apart, and reconstruct the thought, thus leading to a multifaceted and deeper conception of the thought.  The artist who paints from memory sees beyond the signified.  The author sees beyond the signifier.