Don't ever say this to a typecast

[Anonymous No.11655869]

One might argue (as does Finnegan 1977, p. 16) that the
term ‘literature’, though devised primarily for works in writing, has
simply been extended to include related phenomena such as
traditional oral narrative in cultures untouched by writing. Many
originally specific terms have been so generalized in this way. But
concepts have a way of carrying their etymologies with them
forever. The elements out of which a term is originally built
usually, and probably always, linger somehow in subsequent
meanings, perhaps obscurely but often powerfully and even
irreducibly. Writing, moreover, as will be seen later in detail, is a
particularly pre-emptive and imperialist activity that tends to
assimilate other things to itself even without the aid of etymologies.
Though words are grounded in oral speech, writing tyrannically
locks them into a visual field forever. A literate person, asked to
THE ORALITY OF LANGUAGE 11
think of the word ‘nevertheless’, will normally (and I strongly
suspect always) have some image, at least vague, of the spelled-out
word and be quite unable ever to think of the word ‘nevertheless’
for, let us say, 60 seconds without adverting to any lettering but
only to the sound. This is to say, a literate person cannot fully
recover a sense of what the word is to purely oral people. In view
of this pre-emptiveness of literacy, it appears quite impossible to
use the term ‘literature’ to include oral tradition and performance
without subtly but irremediably reducing these somehow to
variants of writing.

[Anonymous No.11655895]

okay but is Ong worth reading? I read McLuhan and don't remember any of it.

[Anonymous No.11656006]

>>11655895
>>11655895
Not even once!

[Anonymous No.11656109]

>>11655869
Interesting. I’ve been thinking about text-fetishism these days, mostly in regards to how discourse contrasts to static texts. The static text always seems to overstay it’s longevity - they are written and immediatly serve as the locus for a (purely) scholastic activity where people pour over specific phrases as if this activity would squeeze out some capital-T truth. Meanwhile, discourse always had, for me, the sense of nourshment. You cook a dish and then eat it and then have to cook another dish when you get hungry again. Text, on the other hand, is like someone making plastic food and then being content to drool hungrily over it.

Of late, I’m coming to the conclusion that discourse serves the purpose of fulfilling a basic human need. However, this is not to be understood as a one-time need, but a recurring one, like hunger or the jones to smoke a cigarette. The mistake that’s been made is to conflate the desire to converse/discourse/reason with the seperate (but perhaps related) ability to transcend mind/matter altogether. In a sense - the mind requires intellectual food to live. This hunger, albiet mental, is not to be privaledged over other, more mundane, forms of hunger. Hence, discourse has the same recurrent telelology as a sandwich.

I think the focus on aurality is like a antidote to transcendentalization of discourse. Forums and chatrooms offer the same antidote tho.

Also - I think a big part of this fetish is involved in named-concepts. Attaching people’s names to ideas and always referencing those names when arguments come up (i.e. “you know, this argument was first made my Hegel, blah blah blah”). This ends up giving ideas an overdetermined ethics, since it effectively anthropologizes concepts, or at least imbues them with an anthropomorphic ethics. Note that online anonyminity helps to assuage this psuedo-ethics, and might be a theoretical underpinning for why 4chan is a meme-hothouse.

I’m not here to say that the entire academic tradition is worthless, and I am completely aware of the danger in advocating for a highly anarchistic idea of scholarship/intellectual development. However, I do believe the way forward is to lean into the punch of memes. That and vipassana meditation.

[Anonymous No.11656217]

>>11656109
>named-concepts
the final scene in married with children when kelly on a game show doesn't remember her dad's name, Al, who the trivia question is about; she doesn't remember because she pushed out that knowledge.
---
>so deep, so, so reaching towards plain nonsense verse

[Anonymous No.11656777]

>>11656217
> plain nonsense verse

I take it you’re not into theory-fiction? There’s a genre of writers who use the vehicle of academic philosophy as a literary medium as opposed to a /scholaraly/ one. It’s people who stopped giving a fuck about the myth that the true nature of reality can be grasped via intellectualizing about. If philosophy is a form of intellectual entertainment then just /make it entertaining/ and start writing about how oil is a sentient entity using all jargon, abstruseness and pretentions of philosophy. It’s a blast to read and is a ton of fun to riff on with friends.

Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia is the best example imo.

[Anonymous No.11657273]

>>11655869
Do you agree or don't you! Why should I even....

[Anonymous No.11657293]

>>11657273
Should we rid /lit/ of all forms of oral literature including the illiad and the odysess, and, as well, should we get rid of any book meant to be spoken out loud such as those of rhotoric and the early sciences on trial.

[Anonymous No.11657299]

>>11657293
>early sciences on trail