Page 45 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

20 Guy Poitevin

(for instance, the Puranas in India). The question of elitist domination
of one tradition over another one is different from that of their modes
of transmission which we may label as a question pertaining to the
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domain and horizon of ‘mediology’ or science of the medium, which
appraises the latter’s capability to effectively and adequately transmit
messages—whether in writing or by word of mouth.
Nevertheless, elitist traditions have often constructed, maintained
and legitimized their ideological dominance through the authority of
written texts, for instance, the epics and Puranas in India (Chakrabarti
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1996: 55–88). Conversely, a number of oral popular traditions stand
as free alternative speech in front of these dominant traditions.
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Therefore, the assumption of a basic clash between dominant and
popular traditions, each of them claiming authenticity and legitimacy
with reference to or in account of a particular mode of transmission—
respectively in writing and by word of mouth—may often and to a great
extent historically prove to be a workable hypothesis.
In the perspective of a cultural-anthropological approach, a few
remarks should be stressed regarding the status of the oral and the
written as modes of communication:

1. Both of them, the oral and the written, exist by virtue of recip-
rocal distinctions made within the context of successive and
imbricated historical configurations, from which they cannot
be isolated. In our present historical configuration orality and
writing cannot, therefore, be granted the status of general
categories.
2. Moreover one should clear out the mythic dream of a ‘Graal
of orality’ (de Certeau 1990: 195–200): no people’s voice can
be retrieved as the carrier of a purely oral alternative culture.
People’s voices appear rather as threads deeply woven into the
intricate network of writing systems, and now visual systems,
all re-articulated in those systems by school and mass media:

We do not believe any more as did Grundtvig (or Michelet) that
behind the gates of our cities, in the remote proximity of our coun-
tryside, stretch vast poetic and ‘pagan’ grazing lands where would
still speak out songs, myths and that proliferating rumor of the
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folkelighed. These voices are only to be heard within the scriptural
systems where they stage their entry. They circulate, dance and just
call in, in the field of the other.