A tribal future
Back
in 1962, the Canadian historian Marshall McLuhan published “The
Gutenberg Galaxy”. In it he described the impact of movable-type
printing on human consciousness and social interaction. He also
covered the prior effects of the phonetic alphabet, and deciphered
those of the new electronic media. The world before writing is made
up of sounds. With phonetic writing, and even more with the printed
page, the world is perceived as visual space. Whereas radio and sound
systems are a return to acoustic prehensions. This is all fairly
straight forward, but McLuhan links these perceptions to the way
societies function. Pre-literate societies are tribal because
individuals cannot distinguish themselves from the group, their oral
surroundings envelop them. The phonetic alphabet turns sounds into
abstract images, and acoustic tumult becomes a silent personal
outlook.
Illiteracy
persists in some regions, as does its tribal mind-set. A century ago
they seemed condemned by the dominion of the printed word. But the
electronic media of sound and image have revived them, just as they
have re-awoken archaic reactions in literate societies. However, the
pre-literate and post-literate tribal attitudes may have the same
causes in verbal transmissions, but their cultural and technological
backgrounds are so different that they can neither converge nor
coincide. What can be hoped is a better comprehension for a less
conflictive transition. And what seems certain is that the
pre-eminence of print and its effects are over. The cold objective
eye has to come to terms with the ear’s warm empathy.
In
tribal societies, land is the property of the tribe not of
individuals. The problem this presents for literate capitalism is
described in Rosa Luxemburg’s account of the French colonisation of
Algeria.
Marxists
Internet Archives
The
second half of the chapter, the first half is about the British in
India where common land property existed in many rural areas.
posted by le Lézard at 1:20 AM
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