Critical &

Emancipatory
Literacy
Dr. Will Kurlinkus
Read 1 Intro
&1
Literature
Review
What is a deep memetic frame?
• Frames: Our ways of viewing the world—ideologies, values, tastes, etc. We cannot usually see
them, but they shape what we can see and not see. What we believe and don’t believe. What we
think is good and bad. Everyone has them.
• Deep Memetic Frames: “ideological ways of seeing and being that, in the case of the panics,
transformed everyday information into apparent evidence of a vast satanic conspiracy” (11).
Almost impossible to disprove.
• Memes: circulate by having a part that stays the same and a part that is improvised upon and
changed. They also capture something of the zeitgeist of popular culture—we can recognize
ourselves in them.
• Conspiracy circulates in a similar fashion: we have a set of truths (there are serial killers,
there is a rise in reported sexual abuse, there are hippies, there is pop “occult” culture)
and improvises upon them (connects/explains them) to extend pre-existing everyday
beliefs.
• Real (things that feel likely because of the deep memetic frame) vs. True (provable facts)
• Panics: whether satanic panics or literacy crises, embody and simplify fears about societal
change (often the decline of some normal or traditional value).
• We embrace deep memetic frames because there is safety in numbers. Even taking up
false information is less dangerous biologically than being alone.
 How the satanic panic
became a thing
• Satanic Panic (and its deep memetic frame): the reading
of the world through a frame in which those you agree with
are empowered by Christ and those you have ideological
conflict with are driven by the devil. From the late 70s to
the present this led to various politicians and forms of
media (Harry Potter, D&D, etc.) getting labeled as products
of the devil.
• So powerful a frame that an industry, recovering
the memories of satanic ritual abuse survivors,
formed around it. (no satanic ritual abuse has
been proven)
• Often reframing true abuses of children and
women through a satanic lens
• Sometimes directly changing the expertise of
police and psychiatrists: they begin searching for
ritual abuse
• Networked climate change: industry deregulation
(Reagan administration abolishes fairness doctrine) and
new read-write technologies (the VCR and videorecorder,
ability to distribute zines, essentially the creation of long-
tail media)
• People took advantage of the panic and sold
videotapes and books, acting as survivors but also
ex-druids
• Protection of the Status Quo: Radical cultural changes
(feminism, civil rights, hippies, communism) lead those in
power (or see themselves as working to get power) to label
change as the enemy.
As a Group Identify 3 Key Problems in
Literacy & Education We’ve Covered This
Semester
The Banking Concept of Literacy—Paulo
Freire
• Problems with Education: the teacher lectures about a fixed reality that doesn’t exist for their
students. Students are expected to bank this knowledge and never forget. This is the banking
concept of literacy.
• Words that sound good vs. words that transform
• This teaches those out of power to buy into false consciousness: believing that the current
system is good and the only way to achieve a better life.
• Freire’s Emancipatory Goal (conscientization): “critical consciousness which would result
from their intervention in the world as transformers of the world” (2)
• Historicity: The goal is having student expand, stretch, break the theories and concepts of
the teacher—recognizing that concepts, people, and culture are always in the process of
changing
• “Rejects communiques and embodies communications” (6)—rejects fixed lessons and
soundbites passed to others and embraces back and forth dialogue where all parties are
willing to change
• Praxis: combining both critical reflection and action to transform one’s environment
Use This For Your Weekly Reflection
Problem Posing Education:
What Are Some of the
Biggest Educational
Problems in Your Opinion?
Identify 3 You’ve Personally
Encountered in School.
Critical Literacy: The
Ability to Analyze The
Roots of That Problem.
“Read the World”—in
Freire’s Terms. Cannot
Exist Alone.
1. Why do you
believe this problem
exists?
 2. In a class like this, how
might we analyze and teach
the critical analysis of your
problem? What readings and
topics would we have to learn
about? What activities can get
us to the systemic roots of it?
Emancipatory Literacy: The
Ability to Actively Resist,
Counter, and Redesign The
Problem. Activism, too,
cannot exist alone for it to be
emancipatory it must be
based in critical literacy.
3. In a class like this,
how might we analyze
and teach the
emancipatory
resolution of your
problem? What
activities can get us to
the begin solving it?
Like Signposts on
the Road—Eric
Pritchard
• An example of emancipatory literacy: recovering Black
queer ancestors.

• Ancestors (people like me who have died) as sponsors of

literacy: you cannot be what you cannot see.
(1) literacy is used to create, discover, and affirm
relationships to ancestors (creating ancestors—
naming individuals as inspiration, seeking out family,
etc.)
(2) ancestors model the multiplicity of identities as a
category of rhetorical analysis (how the multiple
parts of our identities overlap, clash, compound and
are negotiated—“there is no such thing as a single
issue struggle because we do not live single issue
lives”—Audre Lorde)
(3) descendants’ identity formation/affirmation is
affected by an ancestors’ writing and lives; and
(4) descendants receive cross-generational
mandates to become ancestors through literacy.