Ariadne’s Thread: Literacy, Scale and Meaning-Making across Space and Time

Ariadne’s thread is a metaphor used by Latour (1987) to illustrate what he calls “networks of practices and instruments, of documents and translations . . . that would allow us to pass with continuity from the local to the global ” (emphasis added). In Greek mythology the goddess Ariadne gives a ball of fleece to Theseus to unwind as he enters the labyrinth to follow its maze of paths. Using this, Theseus is able to kill the Minotaur and then find his way out again. In this chapter, I explore whether or how the Ariadne’s thread metaphor with its associated concepts of “networks of practices and instruments, documents and translations” can “allow us to pass with continuity from the local to the global”, with the vertical jumps and scale shifts implied.