In any event, in Dr. Rothenberg's 1988 book, he far more fully articulates account of the Roman god Janus (whose names he uses to name janusian thinking in the creative process):
"As the god of entryways and doorways, he was able to look both inside and outside at once. Very likely this function became symbolically elaborated because he was also the god of beginnings who looked both backwards and forwards [as Professor Ong does in his 1962 and 1967 essay collections] - commemorated by the calendar use of his name in the month January - and in several myths he was considered the creator of the world. Although he is often depicted as having two faces (Janus bifrons), Roman doorways were multifaceted, having four or even six entryways [how many entryways are there into Professor Ong's mature thought?], and in Roman literature he is described variously as having two, four, or six faces, all looking in opposite directions. On the basis of this feature, and his mythological importance, I have used his name for another empirical finding [in addition to homospatial thinking], the janusian process.
"The janusian process consists of actively conceiving two or more opposites or antitheses simultaneously" (page 11; his emphasis; but my bracketed material).
Now, a central characteristic of Professor Ong's mature thought from the early 1950s onward, except that he is working with opposites or antitheses as contrasts that he articulates in the creative play of his mind to bring out comparisons and contrasts. For example, Professor Ong astutely plays with the orality-literacy contrast in his 350-page 1977 book Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Cornell University Press) and in his short summative 1982 book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London and New York: Methuen), which has been translated into twelve other languages.
Now, as Dr. Rothenberg's name homospatial thinking suggests, homospatial thinking is spatial. By contrast, janusian thinking if time-oriented - according to Dr. Rothenberg. Space and time are opposites or antitheses.
Now, Dr. Rothenberg's much more fully articulated concept of articulation in his 1988 book can also be related to Professor Ong's various articulations of his mature thought from the early 1950s onward. For example, in Professor Ong's massively researched 1958 book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Harvard University Press), Professor Ong discusses the key aural-to-visual shift in our Western cultural history from the time of Aristotle's invention of the formal study of logic up to after the time of the French Renaissance logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr Peter Ramus (1515-1572) (for specific page references to the aural-to-visual shift, see the "Index" [page 396]).
Now, in Professor Ong's 1962 essay collection The Barbarian Within: And Other Fugitive Essays and Studies (New York: Macmillan), he also discusses the aural-to-visual shift that he refers to in his massively researched 1958 book, but now he refers to oral-aural and visualism (see the "Index" for specific pages references to oral-aural [page 290] and visualism [page 292]).
Professor Ong also uses the hyphenated expression oral-aural in his two 1967 books:
(1) In the Human Grain: Further Explorations of Contemporary Culture (New York: Macmillan; for specific page references, see the "Index" [page 206]);
(2) The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (Yale University Press; see the "Index" [page 353]).
However, in Professor Ong's two 350-page essay collections published by Cornell University Press in the 1970s, he stops using the hyphenated expression oral-aural and starts using the term orality:
(1) Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (1971; see the "Index" [page 344]);
(2) Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (1977; see the "Index" [page 349]).
In my estimate, Professor Ong's applications of his orality-literacy heuristic in those two 350-page essay collections are astute.
As noted above, Professor Ong's short 1982 book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word is summative. However, in it, as the title indicates, he continues to work with the orality/literacy contrast.
For an introductory survey of Professor Ong's life and eleven of his books and selected articles, see my book Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication, second revised edition (New York: Hampton Press, 2015; first edition, 2000).
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