[lit-ideas] Re: "All languages are illiterate"
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:32:04 -0500
JMcC:
What I am looking for is even one example of a preliterate people
with a creation myth in which the Word or words bring the cosmos into
being.
Dunno. But I'm of three minds: (1) literacy objectifies language and makes
it available for fetishism, (2) literacy robs words of magic by making them
just another commodity, (3) I can't remember the third. Were the images in
cave paintings, magic evocative or just decorative? We'll never know, will
we? Never know because no one back then bothered to write down either the
price or the prayer. Even today Jews eschew speaking the divine name, while
Muslims call on Allah day and night, but avoid all images of divinity like
the plague. Christians, however, though middle sibling to the other two,
glory in gory scenes of God's torture and slaughter and constantly call upon
God in the most obscene ways. Go figure.
Obviously John has some thesis in mind that, can he find supporting
evidence, will bring together disparate elements of our pre-literate and
post-literate experiences as a species into a unified theory of an ur-urge
to talk our way into a better world or at least a better paying job.
Perhaps John's thesis is my third point that I can't remember. We'll
probably never know.
Mike Geary
Ministering to Memphis Metaphysically
----- Original Message -----
From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 9:53 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: "All languages are illiterate"
On 10/16/07, Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
So I think the onus probandi is on McCreery (being an anthropologist) to
let
us know what he meant.
I certainly did not mean the imbecilic question being attributed to
me. I know of creation myths in which ancestors emerge from holes
in the ground, stomp around leaving valleys and mountains as records
of their passage, drip semen into the sea forming islands, do all
sorts of things. >
Maundering on about this or that philosopher's view of language may be
an interesting thing to do. It is not responsive to the question.
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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