In Whispers and Furtive Glances: Assessing Digital Literacies and (H)ac(k)tivism in Post-Embargo Cuba

Before going into too much detail about my particular project, it is important that I define and put into conversation a few important terms and concepts that will help you understand my approach and methodology, namely: the digital divide, access, and literacy.

 

In discussing the state of contemporary discourses about the digital divide, Barbara Monroe suggests that "[t]he metaphor of a great chasm--a divide--polarizes the issue as a matter of simply having, or not having, access to the Internet. From there, it is easy to categorize whole groups of people as 'haves' and 'have nots'" (5). This critique of digital divide scholarship is significant, in that it moves beyond outmoded notions of technological determinism and the digital divide as simple binaries that can neatly organize conversations about digital literacy in terms of material access alone. Instead, Monroe attempts to reach outside of these binaries, in order to interpose and call attention to more complicated and dynamic possibilities within the aforementioned conversations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A number of theorists have begun to imagine more nuances in these conversations, and they have attempted to expand the definition of access in order to provide spaces in which the digital divide itself might be re-imagined beyond the notion of material access. Indeed, in Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground, Adam J. Banks introduces the idea of a taxonomy of access. In an effort to provide a more substantive vocabulary for engaging in conversations around access to digital technologies, Banks calls attention to five prospective lenses through which to understand the dynamics of access: material, functional, experiential, critical, and transformative. Meaningful engagement with digital technologies, according to Banks, means advocating for "equality in the material conditions that drive technology use or nonuse" (41). Much like Monroe's critiques of the digital divide, the value of Banks' taxonomy of access lies in his insistence on re-contextualizing discourses around "technology use or nonuse." While proximity to digital technologies still remains a sort of criterion by which access acquires meaning in Banks' work, he seems to open the door for theorists to place more of an emphasis on the ways in which specific cultural contexts and historical trajectories shape (but do not overdetermine) narratives of access in meaningful and important ways.

 

If proximity to digital technologies offers more unique and personalized perspectives through which to analyze access, the plethora of literacies that emerge at various distances to and from digital technologies offer interesting possibilities for looking at matters of access and the digital divide with new eyes. In Literacy Matters: Writing and Reading the Social Self, Robert P. Yagelski defines literacy as "a local act of self-construction within discourse" (xiv). Gaining literacy, in Yagelski's estimation, is not a static affair, but one that involves agency, context, and constraint. In this sense, neither immediate proximity to nor complete absence of digital technologies is a guarantor for the acquisition of "digital literacies"; rather, each social, cultural, and historical context implies its own set of digital literacies that may or may not be inclusive of others.