Response-ability Revisited: Towards Re(con)figuring Scientific Literacy

The purpose of this chapter is to revisit and expand upon the concept of response-ability, shifting from the deconstructive homework of previous chapters to working towards a reconstructive response which renders science education more hospitable towards Indigenous science to-come. Braiding in the work of Torres Strait Islander scholar Martin Nakata’s theorizing of the cultural interface, which accounts for the ways in which hybridity between ways-of-knowing-in-being are unequal, problematic, and yet rife with possibility, this response takes the form of re(con)figuring scientific literacy. In four movements, this response: a) identifies scientific literacy as a central yet uncertain concept whose critical inhabitation is ripe for other meanings and enactments; b) explores Karen Barad’s subversion of scientific literacy as agential literacy as a productive location to rework the connectivity towards IWLN and TEK; c), utilizes agential literacy as proximal (yet differing) relation to bring in Gregory Cajete’s conception of Indigenous science as ecologies of relationships; and d) explores the generative points of resonance between agential literacy and ecologies of relationships. The chapter concludes with a cautionary note on points of convergence and points of divergence, wherein the proximal relation between agential literacy and ecologies of relationships is productively troubled.