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Hoofstuk 2 – Crossroads or Double Helix?
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Die Twee Lyne
It is impossible to treat the communitarian level of authority separately from its means for communicating or to treat sociability separately from technicity.
A formal axiom holds that community lies only at the foot of the edifice of symbolism overseeing it.
And as if there were no coinciding at all between mediological revolutions and political turning points, between the Phoenician invention of the vocalic alphabet and the emergence of the Greek city, between Gutenberg’s printing press and Luther’s Reformation, the industrialization of the book and the formation of national consciousness, political journalism and the parties of notables, Marinoni’s rotary press and the expansion of mass party politics.
A modification of the networks of communication has the effect of altering ideas.
Communication is instrumentalized by domination.
The conformity machine thrives on uniform anti-conformity.
The European Grand Intellectual denounces the culture industry as a factor in mindless conformity, cultural decline, and one-dimensional mass inhumanity.
Territorial disputes are replaced by wars between competitors about norms, the euphemistic technological equivalent of nationalist expansionism.
Hier word die saak gestel deur twee pole uit te lig in die proses van kultuur skepping. Die weste le baie klem op die tegnologiese aspek terwyl die ooste (europa) meer klem le op die ideologiese. Dit wil egter voorkom of daar gesuggereer word dat die weste slegs die ideologiese verdoesel deur dit weg te steek agter die norm van tegnologie en eintlik ook op ‘n dieper ideologiese vlak handel. Daar word ook klem geplaas op die instrumentalisasie van die denke deur sekere ordes en normes wat ‘n uniforme kultuur wil skep. ‘n Slot gedagte is dan dat die territoriale gevegte nie meer fisiese gevegte is soos in die ou dae nie, maar nou eerder ideologiese gevegte rondom kulturele normes.
[wat my laat dink aan die Afrikaner wat geen identiteit het nie omdat hy nie weet watter normes om te volg in hierdie enorme pluralistiese samelewing met impulse uit die weste, ooste, en ook uit eie bodem.]
Die Tragedie van Oordrag
Maurice Maeterlinck lamented that Nature dictates we die at the moment we transmit life. Edward von Keyserling observed that the flame only brightens and gives off heat by consuming its own substance.
So it goes with every cultural emission’s prolongation: things and people to relay its work must be carried on by institutions that soon become fixed into exclusive, normative, dogmatic, ritualistic, corporate societies.
To transmit should not be considered merely to transfer (a thing from one point to another), any more than cultural inheriting should be deemed a mere instance of receiving (it is rather a process of selecting, reactivating, and recasting).
Transmission of a meaning-content in fact incorporates the meaning into its vehicle, submits it to the vehicle’s own law of behaviour.
Witness how disintegrated memories can become as a result of piling up traces, how knowledge can give out under an information deluge, in today’s hyper-mediated societies where too many messages discourage all retention.
Pace good Pauline theology, the flesh is the seat and not cause of sin.
When a simple idea takes bodily form, there is a revolution…
Die tragedie wat hier van gepraat word is die hipotese dat vir enige kultuur/tradisie om voort te leef dit moet sterf, en dan deur die fisiese vergestalt daarvan sal dit voortleef. Wat ook genoem word is dat die outeur nooit self deel kan wees van die skrif nie. Die outeur staan buite die skrif in die sin dat hy bloot die pas aangee tot die beweging. Hy maak die bed, hy wys selfs die bed aan, maar hy is nie die persoon wat ook daarin slaap nie. Laastens word dit deurgevoer dat ‘n idee slegs goed is wanneer dit groei buite die idee self en iets fisies word. Debray noem dat ‘n saadjie slegs goed word wanneer dit vergestalt in ‘n plant. Dieselfde bedoel hy ook vir idees en dat dit slegs goed word wanneer dit liggaamlikheid ontvang.
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Dit was dan Hoofstuk 2 – Crossroads or Double Helix?
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