Thursday, July 22, 2010

SoundEye

I had to miss SoundEye this year, but I just found this prescient field report by Walter Ong:

"In oral cultures a request for information is commonly interpreted interactively (Malinowski 1923, pp. 451, 470-81), as agonistic, and, instead of being really answered, is frequently parried. An illuminating story is told of a visitor in County Cork, Ireland, an especially oral region in a country which in every region preserves massive residual orality. The visitor saw a Corkman leaning against the post office. He went up to him, pounded with his hand on the post office wall next to the Corkman's shoulder, and asked, "Is this the post office?" The Corkman was not taken in. He looked at his questioner quietly and with great concern: "'Twouldn't be a postage stamp you were lookin' for, would it?" He treated the enquiry not as a request for information but as something the enquirer was doing to him. So he did something in turn to the enquirer to see what would happen. All natives of Cork, according to the mythology, treat all questions this way. Always answer a question by asking another. Never let down your oral guard."




Pic: Jimmy Cummin's oral guard. (c) Tom Raworth

Monday, July 12, 2010

Get up to speed on Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009 (via Tom Raworth) and feminist positions on prostitution (via Posie Rider). Please may I have feminist positions on 15 Sexy Scientists fitting on my desk on Monday?

UPDATE: The fifteen vanished. Different sexy scientists.