Week 4
The Spoken World
This week we are focusing on “The Spoken World,” by which we mean a world that existed prior to any technological medium except sound. No writing, no print, no electricity. This is a world of ancient tribal and nomadic peoples, prior to Judeo-Christian-Islamic peoples, prior to Homer, prior to Hellenistic Greece and their emphasis on rhetoric and philosophy. These are people prior to all “historical” records. We can find traces of these people in writings of Judaic scriptures, Homeric verses, and Classical rhetoric and philosophy, but since we have records of them, these people have already transitioned into graphic cultures. Accessing these oral cultures is a difficult task. Two authors and works are important in this discussion: Walter Ong and Marshall Poe. Even though Poe was influenced by Ong, we will first look at some important features of Poe's approach to oral cultures. Whereas Ong focuses on the shift in mental life from orality to graphism, Poe focuses on the material qualities of speech (sound) and their effects on cultures. Next week we will introduce Ong's attempt to separate orality from literacy as important conceptual differences for literary criticism.
Marshall Poe, "Homo Loquens: Humanity in the Age of Speech," A History of Communication
Poe focuses on the materiality of sound and its effects on human evolution in the form of speech. Yet, this offers a methodological problem we will see addressed by Ong next week: since there are few primarily oral cultures and most have disappeared with no record, how do we study them? Poe focuses on the body, particularly the “contemporary body.” For Poe, we can study contemporary rituals as traces of our oral past. The human body is encoded with the medium of speech, even if it has been recoded through writing, print, electrical, and genetic communication.
This study of the contemporary function of speech also leads Poe to some unique conclusions about the importance of speech in the evolution of humans. Namely, rather than a primary social, psychological, and political principle, speech is a secondary evolutionary characteristic. Like beautiful feathers on a bird or beards on humans, speech offers no primary evolutionary advantage. Though his argument is analogical—he borrows from Jean-Louis Dessaless’s theory of relevance and Charles Darwin’s theory of sexual selection as opposed to evolution—Poe offers us the chance to rethink speech as an accidental feature of human anatomy and physiology that in turn plays a primary role in human evolution. What we call “culture” today, in Poe’s view, is simply the effects of the materiality of sound. We will return to evolution and genetics at several points toward the end of the semester: now it is important to think about the following problem: if genetics is a communication code, who is the sender, message (channel), and receiver?
Similar media attributes: speech and bird's feathers?
In order to study the effects of speech, Poe focuses on some primary characteristics of any medium of communication. He calls these media “attributes” that fit all forms of communication media. We can compare these features to McLuhan’s focus on the effects of differing media to find some parallels and contradictions.
Accessibility → Concentration: The role of access to any medium. Whereas speech is highly accessible, some media are limited to a few.
Privacy → Segmentation: The more private a medium, the more segmented its network; the more segmented a network, the more social practices realized in it will be closed. Since speech is a public medium, it leads to an open and connected society. Media with higher degrees of privacy lead to social segmentation.
Fidelity → Iconicity: By icon Poe means a representation that bears some similarity to that which it represents. By fidelity, Poe means a representation that is some how similar to that which is represents. A representation with low-fidelity is arbitrary (for example the word "dog" is is no way similar to an actual dog, but an image of a dog is more similar to a dog. Therefore the image is iconic and the sound is arbitrary). Speech has a tendency to create low-fidelity representations, which means that the world will be symbolic and conceptual rather than sensual and realistic. The higher the fidelity of a medium the more iconic its network; the more iconic a network, the more social practices realized in it will be sensualized. Since visual images can be similar to that which they represent, they emphasis sense rather than concepts. A medium with less fidelity becomes more symbolic its network.
Volume→ Constraint: The capacity of any medium. The higher the volume of a medium, the less constrained its network; the less constrained a network, the more social practices realized in it will value entertainment. In contrast, the lower the volume of a medium, the more constrained its network. Media with less volume, like speech, will economize information to limit that which can be communicated. Electronic media, with higher volume, will be more open and content less controlled.
Velocity → Dialogicity: The speed of any medium and its ability to reach a large audience. The faster a medium, the more dialogic its network; the more dialogic a network, the more social practices realized in it will be democratized. Speech is fast: it is shared by all. This facilitates dialog. Monologic networks are guided by slower media with less capacity for exchange (writing, for example).
Range→ Extent: The longer the range (spatial and temporal) of a medium, the more extensive the network. The shorter the range, the less extent of the network.
Persistence→ Addition: How long (and at what cost) does a medium endure? The longer a medium lasts in time, the more additive it is (i.e. we store writing, we cannot store speech). Less persistent media become substitutive, (i.e. speech is stored in the body, not in speech itself).
Searchability → Mappedness. The role of searchabilty of any medium (able to find what one is looking for). The more searchable it is, the more mapped our thought processes become. The less searchable a medium is, more difficult it is to find one’s way around.
For your reading...
As you read Genesis, Pay attention to the central concepts for the week: Orality, Colonialism (Media), and Categorization through some of Poe's attributes of speech. Admittedly, we are well beyond orality because we are reading a digital code of a printed record of written words that recorded speech a long time ago. However, can these categories be useful in your analysis of how the world was represented in sound? What role do Accessibility, Privacy, Fidelity, Volume, Velocity, Range, Persistence, and Searchability play in the "meaning" of Genesis? One of the important features of media studies is its comparative component: we cannot know the effects of one medium unless we compare it to the effects of another. How do these categories, and thus the content, change since Genesis has been re-mediated from sound to sight, from speech to graphic word? How might media also be colonial, whether it is oral, graphic, mechanical, or electrical?