This newfangled alphabet will be the ruination of us all!
It’s funny to think about Grandpa Socrates scoffing over the young kids with their fancy alphabets and words and written texts. Back in his day they had a thing called "memorization" - and it worked just fine for him. I don’t feel so bad that I can remember the days when floppy disks were actually floppy – or disks at all, for that matter. But the alphabet, literacy, is a technology. It’s handy to be reminded of that. In my copious free time (ha ha) I’ve just started reading _The Alphabet Versus The Goddess_, which theorizes that the arrival of writing and literacy rewired our brains, favoring left brained functions, ultimately encouraging patriarchy and misogyny.
Obviously I love reading and writing so it's distressing to think about these two technologies being responsible for the decline of women's status. But if there's any truth to this, it holds out some promise for the rise of the visual happening around us today. At the very least, we ought to closely examine what our new communications modes might encourage - or discourage. But I don't think we need to be fearful or negative, like Grandpa.
Comments
I've heard of this goddess
I've heard of this goddess alphabet book... heard that it was a little sketchy in terms of argument. Ong had some interesting ideas in terms of literacy allowing linear thinking. At first that doesn't look so bad, but lately I have been less and less in love with linear-ness. I don't think its right to claim that women are oppressed because we just couldn't get with the new technology... Mur.
I'm only a couple of
I'm only a couple of chapters into it, I don't think he's saying that women couldn't read. I think his argument is that alphabetic-type literacy encourages linear thought, so the rise of text led to the dominance of the left brain over the right (visual, holistic), which in turn led to the wide-scale oppression of women. I'll try to make updates as I make my way through the work.
Why?
Why would we think that women cannot think rationally? Some of the best debaters on the college circuit are women. I haven't read the text, but it sounds like there is an assumption that women just aren't as good at literacy/logic (LOGOS) as men. Is that the contention? I really want to reject that.
There are other things that could lead to female oppression. The sophists only allowed men into their schools. There was sexism/patriarchy prior to literacy.
It's not that women can't read
or that they can't use left-brained skills. I believe that the argument is that, as literacy became more prevalent, left-brained attitudes became more ingrained on a society-wide level.
I agree that you can find instances of misogyny in pre-alphabetic literacy cultures.
I promise to finish reading the book and update. I am sorry that I'm apparently not explaining the author's thesis any better.