Thanks for this, Jonathan - first of all, for the occasion to go back to JD Peters' account of the Phaedrus. It is more than worth the (re)read on any number of, in my view, most insightful and richly helpful points and matters. In this context, the main point is that while Peters alludes to the place and influence of the Phaedrus on many accounts of / writers on communication - he himself (scrupulously) avoids any connection / claim / characterization of the critique of writing as a moral / media panic: FWIW, neither of these terms appear in the book. Secondly, many thanks for the paper - delicious reading, as a colleague once said. Lastly and FWIW, your account of the rise of the trope of Phaedrus as media panic makes good sense to me. I'm still curious as to more specific sources and inspirations - but again, not as a critique thereof so much as interest in how different writers / scholars develop the argument. I've a few promising articles to review that I hope may shed some light. Again, a thousand thanks for the excellent tips and elucidation. best, - charles On 26/04/2019 23:26, Jonathan Sterne, Dr. wrote:
The best statement of the media theory reading the Phaedrus is probably chapter 1 of John Durham Peters’ Speaking into the Air.
I think the persistence of McLuhan and Ong’s explanations of orality (autocorrected to “morality” so draw your own conclusions) and literacy can be chalked up to some of the following:
—they are compellingly written and easy to understand explanations of complex phenomena.
— media history has a modern bias which means most people in the field wouldn’t know where to to to fact check. In other words, McLuhan and Ong are often the only texts people in media studies know on the subject. Maybe Havelock or Innis, maybe Eisenstein. But there’s a huge body of scholarship in the history of the book that reads very differently.
—there is also almost complete ignorance of the findings of modern archaeology in media studies (even among most of the media archaeologists) , which would transform our understandings of the emergence of human communication. For an example from another field, see Gary Tomlinson, A Million Years of Music.
— it is easy for (white?) readers to somehow read past McLuhan’s racism and Ong’s theology (in part because Orality and Literacy is scrubbed of the mysticism in Presence of the Word).
And a self-citation for good measure: https://sterneworks.org/TheologyofSound.pdf
—Jonathan _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html> Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no