Power frictions in intercultural education: reading, writing and orality in ICTs

Abstract

Lectura y escrituraThis essay aims to make an approximation between interculturality, ICTs and reading, based on the category of reading ethos (Vaca, 2018), the contributions of Michele Petit's anthropology of reading (2012), Lahire's sociology of reading (1989) and Barthe’s approach from the field of semiotics (1993). The article’s objective is to propose a debate in the area of studies on reading as an intercultural process that transcends the virtual space created by ICTs, and is installed in the educational system’s power grids (Foucault, 2014), which enables us to approach the challenges of the educational system with regard to the two educational competences for the 21st century: Intercultural Communication and Digital Literacy. The question we seek to answer is: what is the relationship between reading, writing and cultural diversity in the learning processes that are mediated today by Information and Communication Technologies? Possible answers are based on reading mediation (Petit, 2011; Ferreiro, 2005), the reader’s identity in public libraries (Quiróz and Ábrego, 2020) and the sociology of reading (Bourdieu, 1984; Lahire, 1999) and the reading ethos understood as an instance for the transformation of habits and awareness of the transformation of the inhabitant/reader and the book in terms of material support. The work methodology was thematic exploratory and criticalreflexive, based on documentary analysis. The result was the description of a relationship of power and frictions between educational interculturality, writing and reading; this relationship enables the trying out of dialogues and possible new indicators in reading and writing assessments, with an intercultural perspective in a technologized context.