3.02 Literary versus Oral
culture
Writing arose from an
amalgam of visual signs and phonetic glyphs. Based on the earliest existing
traces it has been suggested that writing allowed contracts to develop,
accounts to be kept and bureaucracy to develop to allow the organisation of
complex societies.[1]
Writing stayed as the domain
of a minority of monks and aristocrats until the development of printing in
1450. The manufacture of books by machines shifted the control of knowledge
into the secular realm.[2]
It also began a shift of knowledge from oral circulation to literary
encapsulation which was to have a decisive influence on culture. Before the
printed book there had been a technological revolution which had occurred with
regard to wind and waterpower. This involved a sophisticated and widespread use
of mechanics on a large and dynamic scale. This knowledge was in the main
circulating in the oral domain. Another example concerned midwifery. The skill
of midwifery was an area of women's knowledge that circulated orally. The
process by which male doctors ousted the traditional midwives and healers is
well known.[3]
In such areas the book
allows a particular class to encapsulate and develop these knowledges by
increasing the intensity of discourse and quality of systematic thinking that
can be brought to bear on any specific issue. But in this process the class
that is most literate and who own the means of the production of books, and
commodity production in general, also gradually gain control of this new
knowledge.[4]
This information is the basis of a process in which production is mechanised on
an unprecedented scale making the owners of these industrial manufacturing
processes very wealthy and so forming a new section of the owning classes.
In fact this goes so far as
to make knowledge and rationality appear to become associated with the literary
sphere and the new class. In contrast most oral cultures are represented as an
inferior realm associated with the working classes and base sensuality.[5]
Although it is true that the
circulation of written studies produced certain new powers and enclosed areas
of knowledge that had previously circulated orally, the oral realm is still an
essential part of human communications. It seems that the literary discourses
have had some trouble in admitting the vital capacities of the oral
particularly with respect to the reproduction of culture. It is rapidly
becoming apparent that the literary is in fact simply a temporary historical
communications medium within the much larger realms of performative oral
communications which itself is embedded in the totality of our trans-sensory
coding systems.[6]
If the basic elemental
purpose of culture is, as Williams said, to make an ongoing dynamic and total
qualitative assessment of our situation then it is largely in the realm of oral
culture that these assessments, in their most fluid and mercurial form, are
brought to consensus.
Oral communications is not
simply the spoken word. Oral communications is essentially performative and the
most open of public spheres. It may be informed by written texts but the
culture is in its greatest state of flux when communication is least limited by
mediation. A new idea then has the potential to spread through a population
like a contagion. When the oral communication is less intense and widespread we
might find Walter J. Ong's descriptions of the process as rhapsodic or like
weaving or stitching as appropriate.[7]
Culture is essentially a set
of meaningful materials and processes held and used in common. A social process
of communication by which a consensus, on the form and symbolic content of
these materials, has been arrived at is logically necessary. We may assume that
if conditions change then some of these symbols will also change as the
qualitative assessment procedures of culture respond to the new conditions. If
a culture does not change in response to changing conditions then it has become
rigidified and that society is in danger of being unable to be reflexive and
successfully adapt. The survival of such a society is not then assured by the
collective process of intelligence that has so far supported the successful
evolution of humankind.
As all the senses are synthesised
in our body leading to action so the arts must be synthesised by the social
body to produce an intelligent cultural response to our environment. Discourses
that are contained within narrow media disciplines are of limited use to such
a broad response.
[1] See Roy Harris, The
Origin of Writing
(Duckworth 1986), or for a good recent overview of writings on this area see, Spoken
and Written Discourse: a multi-disciplinary perspective by Khosrow Jahandarie (Ablex
USA 1999)
[2] The seminal reference here is
The Coming of the Book: the impact of printing 1450-1800 by Lucien Febvre and
Henri-Jean Martin (Verso 1990 orig. Paris 1958). See also 'Booking InÉ' by
Stefan Szczelkun in Artist's Book Yearbook 1994/5 (Magpie Press)
[3] See Witches, Midwives and
Nurses: a history of women healers by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English (Writers
and Readers Publishing Co-op 1973)
[4] For a detailed account see The
Rise of Robert Dodsey: creating a new age of print by Harry M. Solomon
(Southern Illinois U.P. 1996)
[5] Certain oral cultures are omitted
from the designation as vulgar; e.g. a dialect was adopted as a national
standard (BBC English). In addition the spoken discourse in legal courts and
university debating chambers is carefully circumscribed from the common tongue.
[6] This discussion is continued
within the methodological considerations that precede my semiotic analysis of
Exploding Cinema programmes.
[7] Walter J. Ong, Orality
and Literacy: the technologising of the word (Routledge 1988, orig. 1982 p13)