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Re: Jaynes/Writing/Consciousness.
Jesse S. Cook III (jcook@AWOD.COM)
Fri, 4 Oct 1996 15:24:57 -0400
On 4 October 1996, Warren Sproul wrote:
[cut]
>
>*Contra* one of Jesse s Cook III's main assertions, reading/writing *is* in
>large part precisely about communication with the dead; perfectly proper
>too, as Comte and others maintain that society contains more of them than
>us.
The word "communication" in this context is strange at best. As to there
being "more of them than us", that is just plain wrong.
A key feature of literature - of all types - is, as Niklas Luhmann
>points out, that 'writing and printing make it possible to withdraw from
>interaction systems and nevertheless to communicate with far-reaching
>societal consequences' (1995: 427).
(Ron Kephart: please note the "withdraw from interaction".)
>Moreover, the prime distinction between
>people[s] with writing and those without it is the privileging of such a
>non-interactive society.
(Ron Kephart: please note the "non-interactive society".)
>The importance attached to writing in modern
>societies rests on [1] the ability of institutions to deal with groups and
>individuals by reducing them from unmanageable physical entities to
>predictable and measurable textual entities, and [2] the capacity of
>individuals and groups to generate a variety of written versions of a
>'self' (or rather, 'selves').
Oh, I like that--particularly the "selves".
Jesse S. Cook III E-Mail: jcook@awod.com
Post Office Box 40984 or
Charleston, SC 29485 USA 201-9573@mcimail.com
"...it is not for our faults that we are disliked and even hated,
but for our qualities."--Bernard Berenson (1865-1959)
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