On 15-Apr-06, at 8:06 PM, Judith Rodenbeck wrote:
Arial3333,3333,9999What
of the history of China? Egypt? Babylon? The history of writing is NOT
Eurocentric. The history of writing is the history of accounting, of
domination, of the accumulation and exchange and stockpiling of
knowledge long before anything called Europe
existed. Arial3333,3333,9999
Yes I agree. I didn't say the history of writing was Eurocentric. I
said the history of Eurocentrism is literate.
Arial3333,3333,9999The
history of writing is the history of recording. What recording allows
you to do is FORGET and use those grey cells for something else. The
history of writing is the history of knowledge accumulation and
dissemination beyond the spatial and temporal span of the individual.
Absent writing—or scriptible recording—techniques for remembering make
use of dithering processes—rythm, meter, rhyme. That’s what all the
fuss is about the Illiad. And the information value of what oral
recitation shifts in relation to actual events, so that it’s more
important to fill in the narrative forms and meters and rituals than
it is to maintain a strict accuracy in the account of actualities (or
what a eurocentric might call “fact”). That’s what all the fuss was
about I, Rigoberta Menchu, a book that was accurate as to the general
outlines of a culturally specific experience but which wholly
inaccurate when it came to Western journalistic “fact.”
Not sure if you're arguing with me but I completely agree.
Arial3333,3333,9999Paul’s
right in principle when it comes to getting out of a certain
geographic parochialism. On the other hand "Eurocentrism" as an
accusation presumes that "Europe" is something homogenous, no? But
"European" music now includes rai, qawwali, blues,
bhangra,…
This is precisely why I find it useful to discuss cultural differences
in terms of oral/literate emphases. Rai, qawwali, blues and banghra
are all oral musical forms. That is to say that they do not rely on
transcription for archiving, sharing or interpreting. That Europeans
now enjoy and perform these oral idioms in the same concert halls that
also present highly literate musical forms (i.e. European classical
music, which does rely on transcription for
archiving, sharing and interpreting) may mean that Europe is happily
culturally heterogeneous (?) but it doesn't mean that the economic
inequalities between predominantly oral and predominantly literate
communities have vanished or that they will anytime soon.
Arial3333,3333,9999Yet
don’t we run the risk, hunting so conscientiously for the other to our
so-called eurocentrism, of recolonizing exactly those cultures we
claim to be…what? appreciating for their authenticity? saving?
This is an easy and – to my mind
– specious critique. Helping members of oral cultures that have been
oppressed and exploited by several centuries of literate imperialism
to rescue or reorient themselves is not the same as recolonizing them.
Thinking that digital media and networked technologies have a role to
play in that revitalization is far from insisting on some sort of
stereotyped authenticity.
Arial3333,3333,9999The
discourse of certain technologies is, yes, Northern (incl. Japan) and
it necessarily moves from object to object. The discourse(s) of
process and of medium is(are) dispersive, inversive, remixive. This
kind of mixology wouldn’t exist without script.
Are you saying that because purely oral cultures are generally
retentive and conservative they are resistant to genre-bending
taboo-breaking remixology? Sure, that's a good point. But it's also
true that oral cultures possess other internally coherent remixive
(great word!) processes that are precluded and excluded by text, such
as improvised polyrhythmics, situational antiphony, performative
battles, facilitative expertise, etc.
What I am personally interested in is not the restrictive form of
orality that imposes tradition at the expense of innovation for fear
of forgetting (few of what Ong calls 'primary oral cultures' have
survived anyway) but rather this question: how do we design and roll
out networked interfaces that engage the remixive skills of
disempowered contemporary oralists for potent social, aesthetic and
economic ends?
I believe that oralists and digitalists need each
other. They share common cause and a common antagonist. For the
challenges that remixologists face – oral and digital
– are those posed by the literate capitalist hegemony which, having
long since devalued oral knowledge, is now looking to extend its
print-based economic models (WSIS, DMCA, IP, etc.) to the networked
world.
js
--
2 Million Years of Technology
A one-man show by John Sobol
@ The Bowery Poetry Club, nyc
April 29, noon, pwyc