Radical Information Literacy

5

Colonising IL

Abstract:

This chapter begins the process of enquiring more deeply into the nature of cognitive authority, and its influence on IL.. Learning about authority, and understanding the ways in which it can be wielded both to make change, and retard it, is key to transforming practice in any social context. First, the theories of Jürgen Habermas are outlined, as his work offers a very useful framework for distinguishing between forms of rationality and, thus, how both dialogic and monologic approaches, ideally, should combine in a broad view of authority, but in practice are out of balance in the institutions of modernity. However, Habermas’s theories cannot form the only pillar of a radical IL, because he is guilty of over-abstraction, ...