Although referring to a different time-frame (thousands of years
ago), this could help us comprehend why writing and reading need
not dominate life and work today and in the future. Or at least
it could help clarify the relation among human beings, their
language, and their existence. After all, this is what we want
to understand from the vantage point of today's world. We take
the word for granted, wondering whether there was a stage of the
wordless human being (about which we can only infer indirectly).
But once the word was established, with the advent of the means
for recording it, it affected not only the future, but also the
perception of the past.
Conquering the past, the word gives legitimacy to explanations
that presume it. Thus it implies some carrying device, i.e., a
system of notation as a built-in memory and as a mechanism for
associations, permutations, and substitutions. But if such a
system is accepted, the origins of writing and reading are
pushed back so far in time that the disjunction of
literate-illiterate becomes a structural characteristic of the
species at one of the periods of its self-definition. Obviously
expanded far in time and seen in such a broad perspective, this
notation (comprising images, the Ishango Bone, quipus, the Vinca
figurines, etc.) contradicts the logocratic model of language.
Mono- and polysyllabic elements of speech, embodying audible
sequences of sounds (and appropriate breathing patterns that
insert pauses and maintain a mechanism for synchronization),
together with natural mnemonic devices (such as pebbles, knots on
branches, shapes of stones, etc.
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