On Literacy and Separation (Response to Ong's Article)

I have found Ong’s analysis of language and separation very interesting and inspiring. I think it could be valuable to inquire into how the separation provoked by writing is (more or less unconsciously) exploited in today’s relationships between literates, illiterates, and their societies; and in the value attached to literacy and to illiteracy by industrialized and literate societies. I sketch some thoughts which are flawed by the common sense and generalizations I criticize in the end of the post.

Ong observes that writing “[distances] the word from the plenum of existence” and therefore “enforces verbal precision of a sort unavailable in oral cultures;” (26) he also writes that, by separating “the known from the knower,” writing “promotes “objectivity”” (24) and consequently “[creates] a state of mind in which knowledge itself can be thought of as an object;” (25) the actual reason for which writing may be considered objective is, rather, that it allows separation of “interpretation from data,” (25) and that it also allows for analytical and ultimately abstract processing of the data at hand. The subsequent “verbal precision” has become part of the “chirographically thinking and speaking human beings,” (19) and it has been paralleled by the attribution of a value of objectivity to all the practices processed through writing or reading. Besides, the more those practices are linked either to academic or to administrative spheres, the more objective and authoritative they are considered. Conversely, administrative and academic practices are considered authoritative for their reliance on writing.

My feeling is that this mechanism produces commonsensical conceptions of writing which oppose literates and illiterates in at least two problematic ways. First of all, mainly oral cultures may be downgraded and silenced in reason of their not being competitive in present-day configuration of administration and economic structuring; that is, they may only be evaluated in respect to the parameters of a mainly writing culture, rather than being considered as dialoguing partners of a cultural exchange of strategies. Secondly, in mainly writing cultures literacy tends to be associated too much to more or less socially-rewarded positions and decently- or well-paid jobs; education as the scope of literacy seems therefore to be too functional to the insertion of the person in a ready-made working reality, on whose oscillations the possibilities of working and the scopes of literacy depend; common sense interprets this mechanism by associating illiteracy to social and economic failure, and this does not help to reposition literacy (and social roles) in competition and in dialogue with the economic structure. Literate people are oftentimes either employed or grown as “skilled labor,” and literacy is judged consequently. I guess the reason is that the enhancing possibilities of literacy do not find the place they expect in some of our writing cultures and societies. I have the impression than this place is to be found precisely in the oral dimension, diminishing or at least reshaping the separation which now exists between literate and illiterate. Which of course will imply a rethinking of what being literate/illiterate means.