Ephemeral literacies: reflecting on the impermanence of maize reading divination ARACELI ROJAS University of Warsaw, Poland This article deals with literacies that are created as systems (of signs) that are not meant to be permanent or fixed registers of memory. Their purpose of creation is to discern their meanings, or in other words, to be read. They are conceived as vehicles for transmitting messages that are immediately and intentionally erased and discarded. This is the case for maize divination among the Ayöök people of Oaxaca, Mexico, where images are created by casting maize kernels onto a table, and whose arrangement allows for the reading of signs that enlighten the circumstances behind afictions and illnesses. Among other cases, this example builds on literacies that seek impermanency in order to relate to and exist in this world. INTRODUCTION This article considers literacy as a multidiverse subject, defined by particular cultural contexts and having multiple expressions, according to time and space (Gee 1986). Following the New Literacy Studies, literacy is the way in which people conceive and engage with the world, read it, and represent it, always through social events, and contested in relations of power (Brian Street 1984; 2003). These lines distance from the limited equation of literacy as the ability (or acquired set of skills or technology) for writing and reading, as well as the idea of possessing proficiency in a particular field. Literacy is a phenomenon that requires association with values, social practices, and ways of knowing (Gee 1986, 735). More recently, some words have opened up a broader and pluriversal understanding of literacy, as practices that equip people to relate, communicate, and understand, both inwardly and outwardly, as a way of coming to be in and relate to the world (Perry 2020, 294). Pluriversality is relevant to highlight, as literacies entangle themselves in interconnected asymmetrical power relations within the current hegemonic geopolitics, where some literacies are dominant over others that strive to survive (Mignolo 2003; Rojas 2024). Among the milliard literacies in the world, I have an interest in focusing on some that have the virtue of physical impermanency. These contrast with others that are believed to be durable and, therefore, better repositories of memory. Such is the case of writing whose definition is still the subject of debate (e.g. Battestini 2000; Boone 1994; Coulmas 2003; deFrancis 1989; Gaur 2000; Gelb 1963; Harris 1995; Hyman 2006; Mikulska 2015; Sampson 1990). Generally, writing is taken in correspondence with phonetic units of speech. Aristotelian thought made of this a clear connection: ‘Words spoken are symbols of affections or impressions of the soul; written words are symbols of words spoken’ (Aristotle 1938). In linguistics, the idea is firmly assured: ‘Language and writing are two distinct systems of signs; the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first’ (Saussure 1959, 23). Writing has gained the impression of being able to materialise spoken thoughts, making them permanent and inspectable (Coulmas 2003, 6); otherwise, they are left volatile and triing. Are there other sorts of literacies, however ephemeral, able to make permanent impressions on the minds or emotional states of people? I am driven to reect on literacies that are disposable, and for the same reason, have been deemed incapable of keeping memory. In the book A Study of Writing, Ignace Gelb (1963, 3) expressed about systems of communication such as gesture sign- language, whistling or smoke signs, that ‘they are all of momentary value and therefore restricted as to time [… and …] they can be used only in communication between persons more or less in proximity to each other and are therefore restricted as to space’. For Gelb, the use of objects or markings on solid materials led the way to conveying thoughts and feelings without time and space limitations. He saw that the invention of systems of mnemonic signs meant an advantage in keeping accounts that were intended to last. He stated explicitly that, ‘writing is expressed not by objects themselves but by markings on objects or any other material […] Araceli Rojas is an archaeologist. She currently studies Codex Laud, one of the seven Mesoamerican precolonial surviving books dedicated to the 260-day calen- dar, divination, and medicine, and is now kept in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. Visual Studies, 2025 https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2025.2507600