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What forms of identity translation occur as entre and exit points within a
particular literacy network?
Howare local and global texts relationally aligned or separated within partic-
ular literacy networks?
When and howoften do participants cycle in their reading (and writing) prac-
tices between local and global texts?
Howdiverse are the chains of action among humans, texts, and other actants?
Are texts and textobjects uniquely used for representation, or are they used
and do they act in other ways?
Our analysis begins to address these questions in Brians contrasting networks.
Brians work in school, as described in our examples, involved text work with a rel-
atively narrow range of textual materials and modalities (Kress & Van Leeuwen,
2001). Chains of action appeared as relatively regular humantext interactions
(H-T-H-T, etc.). For example, work in history involved the history teacher translat-
ing curricular and textbook texts to whiteboard and spoken texts, which Brian
translated as note texts, and then later as test texts. Chains of activity in SWG
(LucasArts & Sony Entertainment, 2003) were much more heterogeneous. In the
hunt of the giant peko peko, for example, Brian first consulted a text of information
about the bird, then produced a chat text with a partner, then shot his gun, then
monitored the HAM bars of himself and his partner, then pulled up his inventory
and selected a trap, and then threw the trap and ran. Of course, this thenthen se-
quence is a vast simplification of a large degree of simultaneous activity, but it
gives some sense of the chains of heterogeneous texts, actors (characters, birds,
traps), and forms of action (chatting, shooting, running, throwing).
As with patient records in hospital work (Berg, 1997), texts in the course of
playing SWG(LucasArts &Sony Entertainment, 2003) are produced, read, and in-
terpreted as part of social practices that involve goals (both practical and pleasur-
able) that do not terminate with text production, and in spaces that are not
isomorphically structured and disciplined by texts. Although this observation may
seem mundane, its importance is clearer when one considers how the practices of
reading and writing are fundamentally different when texts are configured or net-
worked with heterogeneous objects. Brians play of SWG afforded the production
of myriad hybrids. These hybrids can be illustrated as circulations that move so
fast that they collapse the time of moving between, say, the skills screen and the
flow of virtually embodied activity, converting it into one subjectobjecttext. We
observed this type of hybrid emerging to a greater degree as Brian gained more ex-
perience in the game. Forms of hybridity were also evident in the collapse of space
between objects of different ontological statusthe blending of print labels, for
instance, with creatures that roam about the virtual landscape, or of traps as texts
LITERACY NETWORKS 333
and traps as effective objects for hunting. These ontological hybrids push us to re-
consider how texts (and literacy) function as actants in streams of activity rather
than being mere forms of representation.
Rhythms and Speeds of Circulation
Although much of the discussion thus far has emphasized the spatial side of
spacetime relations, another important consideration involves the rhythms and
speeds of activity and places emphasis on the temporal dimension of circulations.
In our analyses, the various rhythms and speeds of Brians networks suggest the
following questions for ongoing research and teaching:
How do the relations of texts to other actors in the network create sustained
forms of engagement?
What forms of capital do the activities produce and howmight these forms be
exchanged and recirculated?