On the Gymnastics of Memory: Stiegler, Positive Pharmacology, and Illiteracy

Here I shall write about the late Bernard Stiegler (1952-2020) and contextualize this important philosopher's work with respect to the concrete, everyday pedagogical issue of language learning. To demonstrate Stiegler's applicability to education studies, I shall address the issue of character amnesia (, tibiwangzi in Chinese, literally "pick up pen, forget the character"), a relatively recent phenomenon experienced in China and Japan, which is concerned with the loss of the ability to write and remember Chinese ideograms. I shall use tibiwangzi as a striking and heuristic example to explain the growing crisis in literacy, that is the crisis in the ability to read and write. Tibiwangzi is a Stieglerian issue of vital importance. In this light, my focus will be on language learning and literacy and I shall couch my analysis regarding this in terms of both Stiegler's thoughts on tertiary, exteriorized memory and the neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf's concern with the neurological and cognitive effects of reading. I intend to focus on the apparent rupture or disruption between traditional writing systems (alphabetic writing) and digital technologies and argue that a pharmacological understanding of technology and therefore a consideration of Stiegler's work in the light of neuroscience, memory and digital technologies, is necessary as it can spark timely and critical research into the perceived crisis of literacy. I am making the case for what I am naming a gymnastics of memory.