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Orality: Word, Text and Beyond
International Seminar on ‘Orality: Word, Text and Beyond’
Our knowledge of, and relationship to, the world about us is constructed, sustained, articulated and transmitted in a variety of verbal and written forms. However, for any understanding of the contemporary culturethe pervasive existence and importance of orality must be taken into account. Although literature generally has come to be associated with written forms, yet many non-western cultures have produced an extraordinary range of verbal, non-written literary genres. Oral discourses have wide circulation in many indigenous communities across the world whereby alternate belief and knowledge systems have been constructed and communicated.India is an example of a culture that has traditionally emphasised the primacy of ‘oral’ and ‘aural’ expressions as against the ‘written’ or ‘textual’. Among the great variety of verbal literary forms such as women’s songs, ballads, devotional narratives, heroic epics, myths, legends, folk stories and so on, the majority of the forms are sung, spoken or performed in a variety of social and ritualistic contexts. They can encode entirely new meanings through transmission, and movements between oral and the written. In a multilingual and multivocal context, the oral often crosses language borders.
The rise of empiricist scientific consciousness is coterminous with alienation of verbal performance from the speaker. Modern folklore and ethnography grew out of an essentially hermeneutic insight that imposing Western-literate categories on oral literatures resulted in a failure to understand both the nature and function of the language. Walter Ong has argued that literacy is a ‘pre-emptive and imperialistic activity’ since it displaces other ways of conceptualizing.
Orality and textuality, however, exist on the same continuum and are not dichotomous. Yet historically, all cultures began as oral cultures, and most communities and societies in the world operate, even today, as oral and relational societies in their communication formats within situational frames of reference that are minimally abstract. Oral tradition might appear to have lost its orientation due to the dependence on literate and analytical tools in the production of knowledge, yet it remains the most preferred and usefulmode of socialization.
Recent academic trends reflect a new interest and seriousness about understanding the characteristics of orality, oral literatures and cultures, and oral communication patterns of various ethnicities of the world. The classic texts like the Mahabharata have been re-evaluated in the light of the growing understanding of the role of oral literature and oral tradition in human culture. Communities as varied as the African indigenes, the Australian aborigines, the Baul minstrels of Bengal and the wandering bards of Punjab have a rich repertoire of folk wisdom. Anthropologists, folklorists, literary critics, and creative writers have used such expressions to redefine the dynamics of cultural production and transmission. Scholars such as Albert Lord, Eric Havelock, Walter Ong, Dell Hymes, Dennis Tedlock, Isidore Okpewho, Deborah Tannen, John Foley, Ruth Finnegan, and Elizabeth Fine have given much thought to the interface between orality and literacy and the cultural shift from the active, participatory and multidimensional world of orality tothestatic world of print which lends itself to linear thought.
Contrary to the general perception Orality is not ‘frozen,’ but has its own dynamic, since even though it sustains itself on tradition, it seeks and absorbs newness.In our post-literate world, the boundaries between the oral and the written have become much more fluid as primary orality gives way to a new or secondary orality, produced by electronic technology, which creates new media forms. One can now acquire and processes knowledge inputs in terms of media such as television, radio, telephone, computer and other visual and aural media. The internet, while information oriented, is also oral in its focus and format. These new media forms seek to democratize communication and offer a potential reinvigoration of the oral tradition, thus reintroducing a more egalitarian world. Theorality-based formats could well be seen as cultural unifiers in the modern world.
The Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla will organize a three day International Seminar on 10-12 October 2011 on ‘Orality: Word, Text and Beyond’ to explore and discuss the issues outlined above. The seminar will engage with the following themes:
- What constitutes the oral imagination?
- Aspects of oral/aural cultures in contrast with ‘chirographic/typographic’ cultures
- Aesthetics and poetics of oral literature
- Oral tradition as collective imaginary
- Oral epistemology and indigenous cultural practices
- Orality as performance, and ethnography of communication
- Oral tradition and folkloristics
- Oral histories/testimonies
- Taxonomy of primary and secondary orality
- Orality and post-literate Society
- Political dimensions of orality / literacy
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