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 (提筆忘字, 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.