‘Literacies' in the Arts: A New Order of Presence

Abstract

Through a somewhat interruptive analysis, this article argues that the arts ‘literacies' policy strategy which has become a feature of curriculum policy in the New Zealand Curriculum Framework since the year 2000, presents and promotes a new hegemonic strategy of normalization and reduction. Policy language is an ideologically loaded language, and in a sense, the article attempts, through critical philosophical post-structuralist discourse, what could be considered as a decolonization of the ideologically loaded language of curriculum policy for the arts in education. Paradoxes, contradictions and power politics abound within policy, which can often lean upon assumptions, apparently ‘natural’ and rational thinking. By resisting these paradoxes we may extract the rhetorics and codes of such modes of representation to reveal inadequacies. In the case of the arts, this article challenges the application of ‘literacies' to the arts as an economically expedient strategic act that promotes diminishing arts as normative practice.