Page 165 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

154 Chapter Six

use, and control of knowledge have become [the elite’s] central theme,”
adding: “However, their power depends not on the effect with which they
use that knowledge but on the effectiveness with which they control its
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use.” In Saul’s view, like that of Innis, knowledge systems empower “ex-
perts” versed in their application. Knowledge systems for Saul, however, do
not provide answers to society’s pressing problems; rather, they give rise to
the most perplexing problems confronting us. Who could deny, for example,
that applied science (technology) has contributed to today’s environmental
woes?
Like Innis, Saul sees communication media as linking elites and their mo-
nopolies of knowledge to the rest of society. However, whereas Innis pro-
posed that various modes of inscription and electronic media forge these
links, Saul emphasized language and the wordsmiths. “Language,” he wrote,
“provides legitimacy. . . . So long as military, political, religious or financial
systems do not control language, the public’s imagination can move freely
about with its own ideas.” 17 However, people in positions of responsibility
“are rewarded for controlling language.” Today, Saul sees two languages in
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currency. One is public language—“enormous, rich, varied and more or less
powerless;” 19 this is the language of democratic wordsmiths (presumably
Saul is one, but also others featured in this book, like Williams and Hoggart).
They are devoted to clarity and understanding. The other is corporatist, the
language of technocrats in business and government—and, I would, suggest,
much of academe; their language is “purposefully impenetrable to the non-
expert;” it is intended to obscure. In truly Innisian style, Saul proclaims:
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“The language attached to power is designed to prevent communication.” 22
Monopolies of knowledge for Saul, as for Innis, do not go uncontested.
Whereas Innis maintained that groups marginalized by lack of control or in-
fluence over a society’s predominant medium may contest power by intro-
ducing rival media, Saul maintains that there is a continuing dialectic between
those who, through specialized vocabularies and mathematical complexities,
would use language to obscure vs. democratic forces using language to
enlighten.
Saul also re-presents Innis’ dialectic between the oral and written word. In-
nis maintained that democracy flourished in Greece when the oral dialectic
and the written word were in healthy tension. That was because, Innis con-
tended, the written word on its own stifles thought and freedom as readers are
led step by step to the authors’ preconceived conclusions. Saul presented a
similar dialectic in his contrast of Socrates versus Plato: the former, “oral,
questioner, obsessed by ethics, searching for truth without expecting to find
it, democrat, believer in the qualities of the citizen;” the latter, “written, an-
swerer of questions, obsessed by power, in possession of the truth, anti-