The Enormity of Our Task

The impossible nature of studying orality struck me when reading Ong's book, Orality and Literacy. In the first chapter, Ong discusses the difficulty of separating orality from literacy. The example he provides describes how the word 'nonetheless' is nearly impossible to think of without the context of the written word. As I started thinking about this I found that this was nearly impossible with anything I thought of.

The essence of orality eludes me. Even if I wanted to capture it I wouldn't be able. Spoken word, to me, is the product of letters - symbols invented to drown out memory. Well, at least that is what Ong would say. He claims that literacy must be "carefully monitored" or else it "even destroys their memory." I am not certain how one could "carefully monitor" language so that it does not alter memory though I wonder at Ong's use of the word 'destroy.'

The end of Chapter 1 left me questioning Ong's argument. He claims that, "Literacy can be used to reconstruct for ourselves the pristine human consciousness which was not literate at all." I have a hard time with this because the system (literacy) from which we come blinds us from the "pristine" essence of the true oral culture. I challenge Ong, with the impossibility that he explains, to prove me wrong and give me a view of orality not in terms of literacy. I love his quote - "In the end, the horses are only what they are not."