In Ong's massively researched 1958 book RMDD, he worked with the iteration of his insight that he framed as the aural-to-visual shift (for specific page references, see the "Index" [p. 396]). As I say, over time, he used other formulations of his insight. Ong's most widely known iteration of his insight is expressed succinctly in the two main terms in the title of his 1982 book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Methuen) - his most widely translated book and his most widely read book.
For further discussion of Ong's insight in his massively researched 1958 book RMDD about cognitive processing in Western cultural history, see my somewhat lengthy OEN article "Walter J. Ong's Philosophical Thought" (dated September 20, 2020):
Now, in 1958, Ong also published his wonderful essay "Voice as Summons for Belief: Literature, Faith, and the Divided Self" in the now-defunct Jesuit-sponsored journal Thought: A Review of Culture and Idea (Fordham University), volume 33, serial number 128 (Spring 1958): pp. 43-61; Ong reprinted it in his 1962 book The Barbarian Within: And Other Fugitive Essays and Studies (Macmillan, pp. 49-67); it is also reprinted in An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Hampton Press, 2002, pp. 259-275).
Without making any references to Ong, the white King scholar Keith D. Miller discusses King voice in his book Voice of Deliverance: The Language of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Its Sources (Free Press/ Macmillan, 1992).
Now, in the spring semester of 1964, Ong delivered the prestigious Terry Lectures at Yale University. In the fall of 1967, Yale University Press published Ong's expanded Terry Lectures as the seminal book The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History.
Whatever else may be said about Ong's voice in his seminal 1967 book, he does not express the rich residually oral voice of the black Baptist preaching tradition that the highly educated King expresses in his stylistically rich 1967 book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
In the fall semester of 1964, I took Ong's course Practical Criticism: Poetry at Saint Louis University (SLU), the Jesuit university in St. Louis, Missouri. I heard Dr. King speak at SLU on October 12, 1964, and I also heard him speak in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 25, 1965.
According to the SLU student newspaper report in 1964, Dr. King's speech on campus was titled "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution." According to the "Source Notes" in the 1998 book The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Clayborne Carson (Hachette Book Group), this was also the title of Dr. King's sermon at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on March 31, 1968 (p. 379). By "a Great Revolution," Dr. King meant the revolution in values being carried out by the black civil rights movement in the United States.
Ong refers to another "Great Revolution" being carried out in contemporary American culture and throughout the contemporary world by the communications media that accentuate sound.
Now, as part of the 25th anniversary celebration of the Fulbright Act, the Lincoln Lecturer program was inaugurated in 1972 and carried out over three academic years. Distinguished American scholars were invited to serve as Lincoln Lecturers in various countries around the world being served by the Fulbright Act programs, and an equal number of distinguished scholars from those countries were invited to serve as Lincoln Lecturers in the United States.
Ong was invited to serve as a Lincoln Lecturer in 1974. In April and May of 1974, he lectured in Central and West Africa: in Cameroun, Zaire, and Senegal in French; and in Nigeria in English. (No, I do not know that titles of the papers that Ong presented in his African lectures.) After his lecture tour, Ong published three strikingly different Africa-themed articles:
(1) "Mass in Ewondo" in the Jesuit-sponsored magazine America, volume 131, number 8 (September 28, 1974): pp. 148-151; in it reprinted in volume four of Ong's Faith and Contexts, edited by Thomas J. Farrell (Scholars Press, 1999, pp. 103-110);
(2) "Truth in Conrad's Darkness" in Mosaic: A Journal of the Comparative Study of Literature and Ideas (University of Manitoba), volume 11, number 1 (Fall 1977): pp. 151-163; 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. 186-201);
(3) "African Talking Drums and Oral Noetics" in New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation, volume 8, number 3 (Spring 1977): pp. 411-429; it is reprinted, slightly revised, in Ong's book Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Cornell University Press, 1977, pp. 92-120.
Ong also uses the term "noetics" in his 1982 book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, mentioned above, to refer to what is more commonly known in philosophy as epistemology. His use of the term noetics is consistent with his account of the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing in his massively researched 1958 book RMDD.
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