Does the dominance of the written tradition mean that it is somehow superior to the oral tradition? After all, we know which tradition won out. The written tradition rose while the oral tradition, for all its charms, declined. And the winners, it is said, write the history. The written tradition appears to have proven itself to be stronger and more resilient; it has thrived, until now, while the oral tradition has struggled to survive.
I believe we should conclude from this result that the written tradition is different or complementary rather than superior. What’s more, we should affirmatively guard against any notion of triumphalism that might attend to the “victory” of the written tradition lest it take on destructive cultural and political overtones. The decline of the oral tradition need not diminish its inherent value.
Rather than assuming that the ascendant written tradition ranks as superior to the declining oral tradition, we should cultivate an appreciation of both for their unique qualities. To regard either tradition as superior—or even, for that matter, to view their relationship as a competition—serves to undermine the tenable conclusion that the optimal state of affairs is likely some type of balance between the two.
Before I started this program, I had no special regard for the oral tradition. I was dimly aware of the mnemonic devices of the Greek orators, including the technique of structuring their thoughts as items of furniture in a room, or rooms in a house, as a memory aid. Those days are gone forever. Now I appreciate “memory as art,” as outlined by Father Walter Ong (1971), who noted that “(s)ome paragons of mnemonic sprezzatura are said to have carried tens of thousands of these places … in their heads as a regular part of their thinking equipment.” (emphasis added).
Note that Ong wrote that the great memorizers “are said to have carried” these great storehouses of mnemonic aids in their minds. (The very awareness of these awesome feats of recall has been passed down orally through the corridors of time, while Ong used text to communicate that information.)
Likewise, Marshall (2004) noted that the agonistic stories told about the great warrior, Crazy Horse, by Lakota elders, who unlike their grandparents had never actually seen him, “were always preceded by the Lakota word ske, meaning ‘it was said.’ ”
Chinua Achebe, the renowned Nigerian writer, told Bill Moyers (1988) in a television interview that “the danger, the predicament we (are) going through (is) not telling our children stories … (O)nce writing came, we more or less forgot that responsibility to tell children stories.” The danger is the destruction of a culture.
Last weekend, I read for the first time Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1959), which is considered the greatest novel in African literature. Achebe relies heavily on the oral tradition to craft a story about one Igbo man’s struggle in his own society and the entire tribal culture’s vulnerability in a tragic collision with Christian colonizers.
Like most 21st Century Americans, I have difficulty appreciating the qualities of an oral culture, or the power of what Abraham Lincoln once termed “the mystic chords of memory.” At the same time, I recognize the importance in our global society of affirmatively making the effort to better understand different cultures—especially those that are not far removed from primary orality.
The Lakota culture “still uses the oral tradition and our sole use of it is only three generations past,” Marshall wrote. “It is still a viable mechanism for us.” Ong (1982) cites Achebe as an author whose characters “move in … oral, mnemonically tooled grooves … with high intelligence and sophistication.”
To regard the written tradition with an air of triumphalism as superior to the oral tradition risks cutting off a supply line to an important source of knowledge. The Igbo and Lakota cultures, both of which suffered enormously due to contact with European colonizing cultures, still have much to offer. Marshall, however, said much historical and cultural information “has not been made available to non-Indians” due to a suspicion that it would not be treated with respect as a credible source. He said he suspects this “political and ethnocentric debate … will continue indefinitely, and as long as it is not resolved we all lose.”
Carey observed that communication theorist Harold Innis had recognized the “hostility” that developed between the oral tradition and the written tradition. He described Innis’ concern as follows: “Only knowledge that conformed to the … cultural predispositions of the dominant medium would persist. In a written tradition, knowledge must be technical, secular, and future-oriented for it to be defined as legitimate or recognized as valid.”
To develop appreciation, respect and even admiration for orality is to reject the dangerous tendency that Innis recognized of granting a monopoly of legitimacy to the dominant tradition.
References
Achebe, C. (1994). Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor Books. (Original work published 1959)
Carey, J. (1967, Spring). Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan. Antioch Review, 27, 4.
Marshall, J. (2004). The Journey of Crazy Horse. New York: Penguin.
Ong, W. J. (1971). Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Ong, W.J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing. London: Routledge.
Pellett, G (Producer). (1988, September 29). Bill Moyers’ World of Ideas. [Television broadcast]. New York and Chicago: Public Affairs Television, Inc. (Also retrieved on February 8, 2009: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl9lE5yN1qY).
Hi Steven,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your reflections on the need to value both orality and literacy as ways to offset the
monopoly of legitimacy to the dominant tradition.
I appreciate the reflective and candid tone of your paper. I also noticed the normative prescriptive tone in your call to action of "we should."
Rather than assuming that the ascendant written tradition ranks as superior to the declining oral tradition, we should cultivate an appreciation of both for their unique qualities.
I agree with your conclusion.
On tone
Ironically, past writing professors taught me to avoid writing in this tone because they believed it to carry assumptions and accusations and so forth. Instead, they taught students to write with qualifiers such as “seems,” “can,” and to avoid inserting myself in the writing to the first person pronoun altogether. This writing style resulted in more persuasive appeal, or so they taught.
However, now I wonder if they were trying to secure “the monopoly of legitimacy” to their dominant tradition by producing a timid writing style with which writer’s wrongly assumed they had to detach themselves -- and their readers -- from the content of their expression. Still, this style can be effective because the writer is not asking anything of you, and you have nothing to worry about, and so may be more likely to consider the writer's argument. While it does have its place because the trade-off is writing timidly can ironically come across as a courtesy. Yet a detached and timid writing style effectively grants authority to already existing works, and I don't necessarily buy it anymore as the only way to write persuasively. This is why I find your paper refreshing, so thank you for candidly sharing your reflections and opinions.
Dena