1/25 Tuesday's class

For the preparations for Tuesday's class on 1/25, I read the intro to Walter J. Ong's Orality and Literacy.  And of course what was assigned. 

During this class, Zach Olander and I were online and we concluded that Douglas Adams did acid himself!

Ong says that the book will be about oral vs literacy. When I read books I like to make myself questions, that help keep the bigger picture in mind or that the author has no doubt asked before.  My question is what is the difference? I will no doubt find out in further studies of the book.

Is the medium still the message? I am taking my cues from our first reading on whether or not McLuhan was a semiotician. I wonder what Ong would have to say about that. 

We started the class by talking about Primal and the word primal and what it means in this class. This is good because I had wondered that from the first class, but I was too shy to ask. Kip does a good job of making me think I am not as smart as I am! and I start to second guess if my questions are good ones. I will need to work on my self-confidence. Which has come a long way in the last year. 

I wondered if Primal is an outdated word. Much like we would say (to Rousseau's dismay) "Nobel savage" is an outdated way to look at the world. Or like in my Meso American Art History class with Dr. Moran. 'Pre- Colombian" refers to pre-Columbus. It seems weird to me to talk about many cultures' history and define them based on a silly (I have a very low opinion of Colombus, Having read first-hand accounts of what he did)  man who came and waved destruction on these peoples.  I have just come from Rebecca Wolff's African Art class and I am reminded that when Europeans saw some African art for the first time, they thought it was lesser than. All because it was not made in the same school, in the same way, for the same audience as European art was.  Should we reconsider the wording we use to have a more inclusive audience? I think yes we should always look for this in our daily speech. But should this word change? 

I wish I could draw on this blog! because Kip wrote down for us a cool diagram. Safe to say that as society advances we have more elaboration of our tools. the diagram really sticks it in our mind. 

Self and the World, if you are not like Zaphod Bebblebrox you have a healthy appreciation for the difference you have between yourself and the world. We will look at how I and We change as cultures advance. 

Kip mentioned that contemporary culture alienates,  I think it can but there are also instances of communities finding each other on the internet. I have read stories about people who are Asexual ( Ace for short, meaning people who have little or no sexual attraction these are your friends that just go about their life not being sexually attracted to others!) that grew up before the internet and could not meet other Aces. But people that did found each other after the creation of AVEN in 2005, and even one guy found a wife! Mostly on the website AVEN (Asexuality and Visibility Education Network) if you are interested to learn more about Aces, please go check out Asexuality. Org. I think it is important to mention that with the invention of the internet people have found each other! and learned that they are not alone! 

We also talked about how weird it is to think that a tree has a body. Umm who hasn't thought of that? I probably spent way too much time imaging trees coming to life like the dryads in Narnia. love me some C.L. Lewis, ohh maybe I should write about him as a topic! Hmm...

We talked about how Abrams says that words are gestures not concepts like everyone thought before him.  we start off with authentic speech and gravitate towards stock language. (stock- or stocker? where my notes are correct!) Homer was not using language creatively when he said "the wine-dark sea" Good Ole' Homer, never have I regretted that semester of Ancient Greek 101 with Prof. Padilla here at CNU. Greek is hard, but also you can impress a lot of people just by knowing the alphabet! You'll be the talk of the party! actually can't say that because I have never been invited to a party. 

As we ended class, I was thinking "Is the secularization of culture be able to be traced like the arrow of elboration? and if so what is the relation to advancement in culture and secularization?" looking at it at a glace I can say yes. I mean Nietzche did not say "God is dead" in the  1500s he said it in the 1800s! 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Walter Ong (Assigned class reading)

 3/15  In Walter Ong's book, he talks about oral cultures and what sound means to them. The oral cultures that we have learned about from the reading and in class show that to them speech is the unifying force in their relationships and in their societies. In the reading, Ong says  "sound is a unifying  sense. " This quote really emphasizes the ability speech has in its ability to unify people.    I think it is interesting that we are able to be unified with people by our phones but also able to be separated and isolated. In the oral cultures, Ong describes it is clear that the use of speech and sound in their primarily oral cultures is an important tool and unifying force.
Read more

Blog 8 Black Robe Video

  Blog 8 Black Robe Video A good example of human-centered religions clashing against primordial nature-centered religions is cinematically depicted in the 1985 film Black Robe. The era of this film has its roots in colonialism set in present-day Canada. The plot consists of two Jesuits who are on a mission to relieve a dying priest in fever-stricken Huron settlements. They are guided by Algonquin natives who have superstitions about the presence of white Christian men. There is a lot of miscommunication, mistrust, and disagreements throughout the journey. The Algonquian had persisted for many years through passed down oral stories. Their practices and beliefs, such as the world of night and the power of dreams, clashed with their Christian counterparts, who believed water baptism through Christ was the only way to relieve suffering. Christianity was not a concept that could be understood through the natives, nor could the Christians accept and understand the natives fully. The way...
Read more

Orality and Literacy - class reading

     “In primary oral cultures, where there is no text, the narrative serves to bond thought more massively and permanently than other genres” (pg. 141). This quote from Walter Ong’s book reopened a topic of interest in my mind. I have always enjoyed reading fiction. When I was younger, I spent hours every night reading novels until I fell asleep - book in hand. I remember having some difficulties remembering what I was learning in school, but I was able to deeply summarize the stories I was reading in my free-time to my mom. Hardly a detail went unmentioned when I summarized the stories I was reading, but the information that I was learning at school that was not presented as a narrative was much more difficult to remember. I am really interested in Ong’s phrasing in this sentence. “Bond thought” is a captivating phrase. That phrase can be understood two ways, and it seems that Ong means it both ways. Narrative works to connect thoughts in each person's head, making them...
Read more