Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 41 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing Summarizing
Exclusive to OpEd News:
Life Arts    H4'ed 5/2/24
  

Hartmut Rosa on Resonance (REVIEW ESSAY)

By       (Page 2 of 2 pages) Become a premium member to see this article and all articles as one long page.   No comments

Thomas Farrell
Message Thomas Farrell
Become a Fan
  (22 fans)

I learned about Rosa's 2019 book from Austen Ivereigh's new 2024 book First Belong to God: On Retreat with Pope Francis (Loyola Press) - which I reviewed in my OEN article "Austen Ivereigh on Pope Francis' Thought" (dated April 23, 2024):

Click Here

Perhaps Ivereigh's discussion of Rosa's book Resonance in his new 2024 book will now prompt Pope Francis to read Rosa's book.

It strikes me that what Rosa refers to as resonance is the perfect antidote to what Pope Francis refers to as the technocratic paradigm in his widely read 2015 eco-encyclical Laudato Si' (see numbered paragraphs 101, 109, 111, 112, 122, and 189; the pope's eco-encyclical is available in English and other languages at the Vatican's website).

Pope Francis' resounding critique of the technocratic paradigm is related to what the American cultural critic Neil Postman refers to as technopoly in his 1992 book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (Alfred A. Knopf).

Basically, what Rosa refers to as resonance involves the self-conscious cultivation of a paradigm shift to counter the technocratic paradigm.

Moreover, the self-conscious cultivation of what Rosa refers to as resonance is deeply attuned to the psychodynamics of what Ong refers to as our contemporary secondary orality.

Now, Ong published the essay "World as View and World as Event" in the American Anthropologist, volume 71, number 4 (August 1969): pp. 634-647. It is reprinted in volume three of Ong's Faith and Contexts, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Scholars Press, 1995, pp. 69-90).

In it, Ong delineates what he refers to as (1) the world-as-event sense of life in primary oral cultures (i.e., cultures not impacted by phonetic alphabetic writing systems) and (2) the world-as-view sense of life in cultures impacted by phonetic alphabetic writing systems (such as the ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek cultures and all subsequent Western cultures).

Ong also discusses the world-as-event sense of life in his 1967 seminal book The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (Yale University Press, pp. 111-138), the expanded version of Ong's 1964 Terry Lectures at Yale University. In it, Ong links the world-as-event sense of life to what he refers to as auditory synthesis in the human sensorium. The world-as-view sense of life is linked to visual synthesis in the human sensorium. (For specific page references to Ong's discussion of the human sensorium, see the "Index" entry on sensorium [p. 356].)

In effect, Ong perceptively explores auditory synthesis versus visual synthesis in his discussion of the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing in our Western cultural history in his massively researched 1958 book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (for specific page references to the aural-to-visual shift, see the "Index" [p. 396]), mentioned above.

Now, the American anthropologist David M. Smith explores Ong's account of the world-as-event sense of life in his 1997 essay "World as Event: Aspects of Chipewyan Ontology" that is reprinted in the 2012 anthology Of Ong and Media Ecology, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Hampton Press, pp. 117-141).

I have discussed Ong's account of the world-as-event sense of life and the world-as-view sense of life in my essay "Walter Ong and Harold Bloom can help us understand the Hebrew Bible" in Explorations in Media Ecology, volume 11, numbers 3&4 (2012): pp. 255-272.

Now, within the context of Ong's account of the world-as-event sense of life and the world-as-view sense of life, the conscious cultivation today of what Rosa refers to as resonance would involve the emergence of a new sense of life that we can refer to as the world-as-resonance sense of life.

Next Page  1  |  2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Rate It | View Ratings

Thomas Farrell Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter

Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Was the Indian Jesuit Anthony de Mello Murdered in the U.S. 25 Years Ago? (BOOK REVIEW)

Who Was Walter Ong, and Why Is His Thought Important Today?

Celebrating Walter J. Ong's Thought (REVIEW ESSAY)

More Americans Should Live Heroic Lives of Virtue (Review Essay)

Martha Nussbaum on Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Book Review)

Hillary Clinton Urges Us to Stand Up to Extremists in the U.S.

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend