<Articles>'Being Literate' : Heidegger, Cavell and our Relationship to Language

Abstract

This paper considers how we understand what it is to be literate. It contrasts the common understanding of this term as a state of having acquired a limited set of skills, with a richer conception of a relationship to language. In seeking to describe this relationship, the paper considers Heidegger's writings on the ontological structures of Dasein and explores how useful Heidegger's thinking might be to a discussion of being literate. It considers in particular the ideas of 'forgetfulness of being' and 'temporality' from Heidegger's major work, 'Being and Time' and then, from his later work on language, discusses language as 'calling' and the 'experiences we undergo with language'. The paper then moves to discuss how Henry David Thoreau's 'Walden', and Stanley Cavell's readings of this work, show what the possibilities are of a relationship to reading and writing. In the fuller expression that they give to perfectionist ideas of the development and transformation of self and society through language, I find possibilities for a richer understanding of being literate.