Page 192 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Keeping the Portals Open: Poster vs. Innis 181

any and all connection with material reality, an eventuality not to be regret-
ted, according to the author, but celebrated. 33

Critique

Undoubtedly Poster is correct that some communication in oral cultures cor-
responds to the immediate circumstances of the interlocutors. But it is also
true that much oral communication in tribal societies is/was devoted to re-
counting histories and myths which set the ontological framework of every-
day life. Homer’s poetry depicting the intervention in human affairs of the
gods of Mount Olympus, for example, did not correspond (we now think) di-
rectly to the material circumstances of daily life in ancient Greece. The Old
Testament, likewise, was inscribed from oral transmissions, but its mysticism
did not correspond to the warp and woof of everyday existence. In animistic
societies, too, each blade of grass is deemed to be host to a spirit or deity,
making dubious the validity of Poster’s assertion that “symbolic correspon-
dence” characterizes oral society. One might even suggest that, due to the im-
portance of legends, myths, superstitions and sacred stories, the self-referen-
tial (“floating signifiers”) property of language was greater in tribal (oral)
society than it is today in our largely secularized society.
Consider next Poster’s claims regarding changes to language wrought by the
shift to electronics from writing. As noted in chapter 7, in Anatomy of Criticism
Northrop Frye insisted that writing is predominantly self-referential, 34 that
“nothing is prior in significance to literature itself.’ For Frye, works of litera-
35
ture reflect and refer primarily to one another through their conventions, genres,
images, archetypes and so forth. Even science, Frye contended, is largely an “or-
der of words.” Frye subsequently backed away from that firm (one might say,
extreme) position, proposing instead that the self-referential properties of lan-
36
guage/discourse are moderated by influences of the material world. Frye, in
other words, became dialectical with regard to his understanding of language
and material reality.
Science philosopher Thomas Kuhn similarly posited a strong self-referential
aspect to scientific literatures, arguing that science is in part a socio-cultural ac-
tivity practiced by like-minded investigators who observe phenomena through
the lens of the presuppositions and the prior expectations of their disciplines, i.e.
through their literatures. Like Frye, though, Kuhn recognized that material real-
ity impinges upon these discourses, bringing about, in his terms, “scientific rev-
37
olutions.” In the end, therefore, both Frye and Kuhn are to be distinguished
from contemporary poststructuralists due to the bidirectional interactivity
they understood to exist between language/discourse on the one hand and
material/nonverbal reality on the other. Contentions like those of Frye and Kuhn,