Literacy Studies After Complexity

New Literacy Studies transformed literacy research by demonstrating that literacy is socially situated, ideologically mediated, and irreducible to autonomous skills. Yet its pursuit of complexity has also produced a problem of scale: Scholarship may effectively unsettle reductive accounts yet struggle to articulate positions capable of coordinating pedagogy, policy, and public action. Drawing on postcritical theory and conjunctural analysis, we propose strategic stabilizations: a provisional, scale-specific framework that foregrounds selected literacy commitments, brackets others, and enables coordinated action under conditions that demand a decision. We illustrate the urgency for strategic stabilizations through the example of generative AI, arguing for minimal dependence on commercial systems, sustained critical AI literacy, and differentiated commitments across classrooms, institutions, and policy. Strategic stabilization converts established insights into contestable, revisable forms that can guide collective judgment in volatile conditions.