His father “knew how to read, and he knew how to write – he possessed those skills. But he had a helluva time with understanding his own social predicament. Like so many first generation Americans of his era, he could simply not grasp what had happened ‘to’ him, he could not…theorize his own subject position, his place within the social fabric…The point in that my father had never developed the tools – the critical – tools to think about his social circumstances in social terms…When I think of literacy, my father comes immediately to mind: excellent speaking skills, sold writing skills, and yet a curious lapse in seeing himself in any but an individualistic context. So like I say, after things fell apart, it could only be his fault” (380).
“The real value of writing may reside less in understanding how-to-succeed in business thinking…than in understanding why-we-do-what-we-do thinking. And acting accordingly…And to think of writing both as a technology and as a subject to historical contingencies is to consider the various materials of writing – the alphabet, paper, ink, software, hardware, hands – in terms of their participation in material practices [and how] the modes of production, consumptions and distribution have altered both the products and processes of writing is significant ways” (381).