<<< home | H79.2004 - Communications Lab | Orality and Literacy – Response

Reading the first four chapters of Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy, has been difficult as much as it was revealing. The text was indeed challenging and at times almost undecipherable, especially at the wee hours of the night, despite all that I found it to be intensely thought provoking and enlightening (shocking how many things one can take for granted)

I am always at awe when when presented with an idea or a thought that breaks through the constraints of our perception, and such was the case at hand. Ong begins with a revelation of somewhat obvious nature, establishing the difference between literacy and primary orality. Yes, I had a vague concept of an era in which writing didn’t exist, but never imagined the profound impact it might have of thought itself.

As preconceived notion after presumptuous idea shatter one by one while reading this book, and as the history and characteristics of oral culture vs literate culture masterfully unveil, I find myself reflecting on the traces and hold of both in our everyday life. While describing and dissecting the law of the primary oral cultures, a sense of strange familiarity echoes to the here and now. I refer mostly to the partial awareness, illusive as it may be, of the primary oral being that dwells within ourselves. Being as we are, of a literate and analytic mindset, there is still a trace of a more primal part of our being, that which is physical, present, that which doesn’t categorize, analyze, dissect but one that reacts and engages fully without the luxury of becoming detached, one that requires heroic action figures, repetition and big flatulent epithet to keep us going.

You might say I’m drawn towards internalizing to some extent, the cultural phenomenon and different thinking patterns of the oral and literate and attempting to apply them on an individual scale and sway away from the historical discussion, into in introspection of the traces this process has stamped within us. Psychotherapy comes to mind . While one can read about theoretical concepts and ideas regarding psychotherapy and the evolution of the human mind, it is very difficult to able to gain access to actual therapy. You can read about it, but could never read it. The reason for that (ethics aside) emanates from it’s existence in realm of the spoken word, it does not exist without speech, and it doesn’t gain nothing from being written, it draws only from a natural speech and attempt to might light on the subconscious. In an odd way, it attempts to break down our literate, abstract thinking and break through to the Idolatry Mesopotamian within. More often than not, by distancing ourselves to the realm of abstract thought we obliterate and repress the primal, however the joke is on us since that ancient oral being is always there, steering the ship, while our conscious minds furiously intellectualize it’s actions to no avail.

Music, or rather improvised music is another interesting example of how oral residue and literacy intertwined. Improvisation in a mystical craft, and much like oral poetry, it is parametric, it is of the moment, it has unconscious and conscious rules, or decides to not have rules (a rule in itself), it’s an interactive, spontaneous, often violent language of dynamic fluctuation. Improvised music is approached in both a strictly oral or purely literate sense as study of musical theory allows constant growth and development of ideas, yet the act of playing is and always a live event responsive in nature and by no means analytic, distant or detached (preferably). It perhaps points out to a necessary fusion or coexistence of the two, acknowledging our residual oral ancestry and the magical ,immediate and captivating traits, unavailable to us unless we tap into it.

Questions to self, is the exceeding abundance of writing on various social networks equals the immediacy of text in the same way spoken word once was? Twitter for example offers instantaneous yet fleeting means of expression; excess of information deems it unsearchable and therefore only valid momentarily. Is this a new form of orality, or a chimera of sorts?

A final note to self, even though we are indeed literate, we still at times make a conscious choice and turn back to our fundamentally primal nature and watch the shopping channel for some much needed relief. After all, there is nothing quite like an infomercial or trashy reality TV in mimicking the laws and dynamics of oral antiquity, repetition, aggregation, exaggeration. It might not be too scholarly of us, but it sure is fun.