Notes from the Walter Ong Collection

Going through the unfiled files (that is, the files from Fr. Ong’s desk and book shelves which were never formally filed), I’ve come across two more references to secondary visualism.¹ Unfortunately, since both are from talking points, neither go into any depth; however, in the second piece, “Notenda for Informal Response,” Ong offers a short but radical expansion of his notion of secondary orality and secondary visualism.

The first is from talking points Ong wrote for a guest lecture to Vincent Casaregola’s “Rhetorical Theory and Discourse Pedagogy” course here at Saint Louis University on 15 March 1993. In it, Ong writes:

2. Effect of electronics (first pre-elecrtronic gramophone or mechanical, non-electric phonograph or gramophone [1857, Edison 1877]; electricity in electric telegraph (1837), telephone (1876), crystal-set radio; electronics emerging around 1920s, vacuum tube). Effects multiple and endless: secondary orality (dependent on writing, but results resemble primary orality (EXPLAIN–spontaneity of ’60s). But also “secondary visualism” indefinitely enhanced visual field (graphics, &c), “virutal reality.” Digitization: timepieces commonest experiences of the digitization of the nondigitizable; Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory. Musicians’ rejection of digitized music as unreal. For you deal with: hypertext (George P. Landow’s Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology), footnoting footnotes on footnotes on footnotes: everything on any subject (but what is a “subject”?). Comparable development < --- information increase and explosion: old-time history (residual orality: past=action of "heavy" figures) > les annalistes (Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood) > the “new history” > Mentalitiés/Mentalities.

The second is from a one-page, single-spaced printout titled “Notanda for Informal Response,” written for the 1995 Midwest Modern Language Association Annual Convention session “Presences of the Word: Ong Studies for the 21st Century.” In it, Ong writes:

Orality-literacy studies have always been an open field. No one can pretend ever to have said the last word. In orality-literacy studies, now is the time when, more than ever before, we should study interactions. To do this we must be aware of the characteristics of (among other things):

Primary orality.

Oral residue after writing and writing’s sequels. My PW, OL, &c.² Very helpful: Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy.

Secondary orality (orality interacting with writing, print, and electronics): not only in the electronic age (to which I first applied the term, directly to radio and television) but also in the manuscript and print ages and postmodern deconstruction. Paul, close of 2 Thess.

In addition, secondary visualism of manuscript age, and much more of print age (exactly repeatable visual statement) and of electronic communication (graphics).

Internet: basically visual (computer screen) and hence inevitably distancing (you cannot know for sure the identity of the person with whom you are communicating). Because of the at least unconsciously sensed distancing, compulsive preoccupation with intimacy (featured achievement: out of the millions who correspond on internet, two eventually marry one another–featured story proving great and pervading intimacy!) A reason for compulsive preoccupation with intimacy: rapidity of electronic interchange of thought between two persons creates an environment like–but not the same as–that voice, vocal exchange, sound, in face-to-face interaction. But virtual reality is by definition not face-to-face. Cf. Bukatman, Terminal Identity (subconscious suppressed).

1. For other references to secondary visualism and secondary literacy, see both my post “Ong on Secondary Orality and Secondary Literacy” and Ong’s unpublished lecture “Secondary Orality and Secondary Visualism.” [back]
2. The Presence of the Word and Orality and Literacy. [back]

The title of this post is a question posed to Fr. Ong during his presentation “Communications and the Rise of Individualism,” given May 9, 1983 in the Vatican Film Library of Saint Louis University.¹ Ong’s response:

I do not think there is the slightest chance of that. It will change the way one writes, but not stop the writing. Let me give an example. A man from Boston asked to interview me for a book, The New Jesuits, and we made arrangements to meet for taping. The interview took place, the tape was transcribed and edited. He edited it massively. I edited his version. We talked further about it on the phone, during which time he taped about a half hour interview. He edited that tape into the re-re-edited transcript and sent that back to me. I edited it some more, sent it back. Then there was an exchange of calls and post cards, and finally the thing came out. What have you got? Something nobody ever wrote and nobody ever said. We do not have a conceptual apparatus to handle this. What am I? Am I the author? Is he the impresario? The master of ceremonies? Is it “Walter Ong presented by George Riemer”? Why all this hanky-panky? To make it sound informal. Why does it have to sound informal? Because we’re literate, and literate people believe that conversations are informal. Oral people don’t believe this at all. For oral people conversations are quite normally formal. Because we believe that oral exchange should be informal, we fake it. But the printed text is not really orality. People read it. Nobody is ever going to say it. The whole thing is completely unreal, but it is very good. There is a much better text here. One learns a great deal more than if they had not done it this way. One time during the interview the interviewer said, “Look, we’re not talking like a couple of old friends.” I said, “Of course not. You’re asking questions that you are going to put this in a book that you hope will be read by thousands of people and I am answering on the same basis.” Now he even worked that conversation into the book, after he edited it to make it sound natural.

No oral culture, no writing, no print culture, could have produced this book or anything like it. There are thousands of books that are produced and published because of the electronic media that would never have been produced before. The electronic media are not killing off books, they are making more books. But they change the style. The style is different by being an informal printed book. This informal style would not be found in the nineteenth century.

1. Published in Views on Individualism: Presentations by Israel M. Kirzner, Walter J. Ong, Mancur Olson, and Kurt Baier. Ed. Donna Card Charron. St. Louis: St. Louis Humanities Forum, 1986. 29-43. [back]

Among the files of “Oral Remembering and Narrative Structures” (Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics, 1981: Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk. Ed. Deborah Tannen. Washington: Georgetown UP, 1982. 12-24) is an outline for the then in-progress Orality and Literacy. For the book’s introduction, Ong writes:

Not a “movement” nor a set of theories (Russian Formalism, Structuralism, new Criticism) but an awareness. No “school” or canon. Not reductionism, but relationism.

While Ong’s use of secondary orality is well known and widely used in relation to digital contexts, his use of secondary literacy is largely unknown. The term’s obscurity comes as no surprise as it’s buried in a 1996 interview in Composition FORUM (Kleine, Michael, and Fredric G. Gale. “The Elusive Presence of the Word: An Interview with Walter Ong.” Composition FORUM 7.2 (1996): 65-86): (more…)

[The above title is, of course, a allusion to Ong's essay "The Talked Book," which is different than a talking book, but there you go. While I'm titling this post "The Talking Book 2.0," that's probably a term better used for books on CD-ROM. And now that I think about it, there's also .mp3, .wav, etc. audio books, and now those self-playing digital audio books from Playaway. But as this is the second generation talking book for accessibility issues, I'll leave it as "The Talking Book, 2.0."] (more…)