Abstract Thought of the Day: All of our days should be 9/11's (not literally) - in the sense that you remember everyday like the days history "forces" you to remember.
Ong Orality and Literacy ch. 4: "The author might be challenged if only he or she could be reached, but the author cannot be reached in any book. There is no way directly to refute a text. After absolutely total and devasting refutation, it says exactly the same thing as before. This is also one reason why books have been burnt. A text stating what the whole world knows is false will state falsehood forever, so long as the text exists. Texts are inherently contumacious."
Also in this chapter is perhaps one of my favorite parts wherein Ong discusses Plato and his Socrates.
"Writing, Plato has Socrates say in the Phaedrus, is inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind what in reality can be only in the mind. It is a thing, a manufactured product. ...Secondly, Plato's Socrates urges, writing destroys memory. Those who use writing will become forgetful, relying on an external resource for what they lack in internal resources. Writing weakens the mind....Thirdly, a written text is basically unresponsive. If you ask a person to explain his or her statement, you can get an explanation; if you ask a text, you get back nothing except the same, often stupid, words which called for your question in the first place."
I love Plato's argument, especially how text is unresponsive and there is no way to question what the author is trying to say. I know that when I am often reading Yates, it would be helpful for me to be able to ask her what it was she is trying to say with some of her sentences.
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