Negative capability as a component of critical literacy: Suspicion, suspension, sustenance

A decade after ‘post-truth’ was selected as Oxford Dictonaries’ Word of the Year, events like the global pandemic, wars across the globe, and the rise of generative AI have further eroded the sense of a common world. In response to this instability, this paper advocates a shift of emphasis in critical media literacy education from an instrumental to a hermeneutic orientation. Rather than assuming that addressing epistemic issues of mis- / dis-information enhances our capacity to navigate ethical issues of cohabitation, I argue that ethical relationships enable the achievement of knowledge. Constructing such relationships requires cultivating literacy as semantic and axiological sensibility. For this critical and constructive project, I argue that critical literacy must encompass a capacity that has hitherto been under-appreciated—negative capability. It is the ability to endure uncertainty without irritably resorting to explanation. To support this claim, I examine the concept of negative capability through its origins in the letters of John Keats and its subsequent uptake in educational literature. I then show how Paulo Freire’s conception of critical literacy already presupposes the importance of negative capability and make the case for explicitly incorporating it as a component of critical literacy through three heuristic ‘sus’ words:suspicion, suspension, and sustenance.