Incipient writing was pictorial. This was an advantage in that it
regarded the world directly, immediately perceived and shared,
and a disadvantage in that it did not support more than a
potential generality of expression. It maintained notation very
close to things, not to speech. Image-dominated language came
along with a simplified frame of space and time reference.
Things were presented as close or far apart, as successive
events or as distant, interrupted events. Anyone with a minimal
visual culture can read Chinese or Japanese ideograms, i.e., see
mountain, sky, or bird in the writing. But this is not reading
the language; it is reading the natural world from which the
notation was extracted, reconstituting the reference based on the
iconic convention.
Alphabetic writing annihilates this frame of experience based on
resemblance. Unless time is specifically given, or coordinates
in space intentionally expressed, time and space tend to be
assimilated in the text, and more deeply in the grammar. It is a
different communication, mediated by abstract entities whose
relation to experience is, in turn, the result of numerous
substitutions, the record of which is not at the disposal of the
reader. Between tell in English and the root tal (or dal) in
proto-language (with the literal meaning of tongue), there is a
whole experiential sequence available only implicitly in the
language. In the nostratic phylum (root of many languages, the
Indo- European among them), luba stands for thirst; the English
love and the German Liebe seem to derive from it, although when
we think of love we do not associate it with the physical
experience of thirst.
Clues in written language are clues to language first of all, and
only afterwards clues to human experience. Accordingly, reading
a text requires an elaborate cognitive reconstruction of the
experience expressed, and probably a never-ending questioning of
the appropriateness of its understanding. When a text is read,
there is nobody to be questioned, nobody to actively understand
the understanding, to challenge it. The author exists in the
text, as a projection, to the extent that the author exists in
the manufactured objects we buy in order to use (glasses to
drink water, chairs to sit on), or in whose production we
participate in some way. After all, each text is a reality on
paper, or on other means of storage and display. Clues can be
derived from names of writers and from historic knowledge. What
cannot be derived is the reciprocal exchange which goes on
during conversation, the cooperative effort under circumstances
of co- presence.
Regardless of the degree of complexity, the interactive component
of orality cannot be maintained in writing. This points to an
intrinsic limitation relevant to our attempt to find out why
literacy does not satisfy expectations characteristic of
practical experiences requiring interactivity. The metaphoric
use of interactivity, as it is practiced to express an animistic
attitude according to which, for instance, the text is alive, and
we interact with it in reading, interpreting, and understanding
it, addresses a different issue. Difficulties in language
understanding can be overcome, but not in the mechanical effort
of improving language skills by learning 50 more words or
studying a chapter in grammar. Rather, one has to build
background knowledge through extending the experience
(practical, emotional, theoretical, etc.) on which the knowledge
to be shared relies.
But once we proceed in this direction, we step out from the
unifying framework of literacy, within which the diversity of
experiences is reduced to the experience of writing, reading,
and speaking. When this reduction is no longer possible-as we
experience more and more under the new conditions of
existence-understanding language becomes more and more
difficult. At the same time, the result of understanding becomes
less and less significant for our self-constitution in human
experiences. If no other example comes to mind, the reader
should reflect upon the many volumes that accompany the software
you've bought in recent years. Their language is kept simple,
but they are still difficult to comprehend. Once comprehended,
the pay-off is slim. This is why the illiterate strategy of
integrating on-line the instructions one needs to work with
software is replacing literate documentation. These instructions
can be reduced to graphic representations or simple animations.
The framework is specialization, for instance, in providing
instructions in a form adequate to the task. Within specialized
experience, even writing and reading are subject to
specialization. Literacy turns into yet another distinct form of
human praxis instead of remaining its common denominator.
Writing, in this context, makes it clear that language is not
enough for understanding a text. Under our own scrutiny, writing
becomes a form of praxis in itself, contributing to the general
fragmentation of society, not to its unification. This happens
insofar as specialized writing becomes part of the general trend
towards specialization and generates specialized reading. Some
explanation is necessary.
Even when writers strive to adapt their language to a specific
readership, the result is only partially successful, precisely
because the experiences constituted in writing are disjoint.
Indeed, the practical experience to be shared, and the subsequent
practical experience of writing are different, pertinent to
domains not reducible to each other. Sometimes the writer falls
captive to the language (that very specialized subset of
language adapted to a specific field of knowledge) and mimics
natural discourse by observing grammar and rhetoric devices.
Other times, the writer translates, or explains, as in popular
magazines on physics, genetics, arts, psychology. Within this
type of interpretive discourse either details are left out, or
more details are added, with the intention of broadening the
common base. Expressive devices, from simple comparisons (which
should bridge different backgrounds) to metaphors, expose
readers to a new level of experiences. Even if readers know what
comparisons are and how metaphors work, they still cannot
compensate for the unshared part of experience, with whose help
a text makes sense. A legal brief, a military text, an investment
analysis, the evaluation of a computer program are examples in
this sense. The language they are written in looks like English.
But they refer to experiences that a lawyer, or military
officer, or broker, or computer programmer is likely to be
familiar with.
Writers, speakers, readers, and listeners are aware of the
adjustments required to comprehend these and many other types of
documents. While a direct conversation, for which time spent
with others is required, can be a frame for adjustment, a printed
page is definitely less so. The reader can, at best, transmit a
reaction in writing, or write to request supplementary
explanation, that is, to maintain the spirit of conversation. The
experience of writing and reading is becoming less a general
experience or cultural identifier, and more a specialized
activity. Writing can be read by machines. In order to serve the
blind, such machines read instructions, newspaper articles, and
captions accompanying video images. The synthetic voice, as much
as a synthetic eye or nose, a syntactic touch-sensitive device,
or taste translator, operates in a realm devoid of the life that
went into the text (image, odor, texture, taste) and which was
supposed to be contributed by the reader (viewer, smeller,
toucher, taster).
Literacy, projected as a universal and permanent medium for
expression, communication, and signification, nourished a
certain romanticism or democracy of art, politics, and science.
It embodied an axiomatic system: since everybody should speak,
write, and read, everybody can and should speak, write, and read;
everybody can and should appreciate poetry, participate in
political life, understand science. This was indeed relatively
true when poetry, politics, and science were, to a certain
degree, direct forms of human praxis with levels of efficiency
appropriate to the scale of human activity constituted in
linear, homogeneous practical experiences. Now that the scale
changed, dynamics accelerated, mediation increased, and
non-linearity is accepted, we face a new situation.
Paradoxically, the poet, the speech-writer, and the
science-writer not only fail to address everybody, but they, as
part and result of the mechanism of labor division, also
contribute to the generation of partially literate human beings.
In other words, they contribute to the fragmentation of society,
although they are all devoted (some passionately) to the cause
of its unity. In reaction to claims that literacy carried
through time, a general deconstructionist attitude challenges the
permanency of philosophical tractate, of scientific systems, of
mathematics, political discourse and, probably more than
anything else, of literature. The method applied is coherent:
make evident the mechanisms used to create the illusion of
permanence and truth. Texts thus appear as means to an end that
does not directly count. What results is an account of the
technology of expression, embraced by all who grew skeptical of
the universality of science, politics and literature. When each
sign (independent of the subject) becomes its own reference, and
the experience it embodies is, strictly speaking, that of its
making, the deconstructionist project reaches the climax. Nike's
advertisement is not about sneakers, even less about the
celebrities who wear them. It is a rather hermetic
self-referential experience. Its understanding, however, is based
on the fast-changing experience of revealing one's illiterate
identity.