Now, taking various hints from Ong, I discuss Ong's account of our contemporary secondary oral culture in my essay "Secondary Orality and Consciousness Today" in the well-organized anthology Media, Consciousness, and Culture: Explorations of Walter Ong's Thought, edited by Bruce E. Gronbeck, Thomas J. Farrell, and Paul A. Soukup (Sage Publishing, 1991, pp. 194-209).
In my 1991 essay "Secondary Orality and Consciousness Today," I discuss the Jungian psychoanalyst Erich Neumann's masterful synthesis of C. G. Jung's thought titled The Origins and History of Consciousness, translated from the German by R. F. C. Hull (Pantheon Books, 1954; orig. German ed., 1949). I also quote Ong's masterful summary of Neumann's 1954 book in his 1971 book Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (Cornell University Press, pp. 10-11):
"The stages of psychic development as treated by Neumann are successively (1) the infantile undifferentiated self-contained whole symbolized by the uroboros (tail-eater), the serpent with it tail in its mouth, as well as be other circular or global mythological figures [including Nietzsche's imagery about the eternal return?], (2) the Great Mother (the impersonal womb from which each human infant, male or female, comes, the impersonal femininity which may swallow him [or her] up again), (3) the separation of the world parents (the principle of opposites, differentiation, possibility of change, (4) the birth of the hero (rise of masculinity and of the personalized ego) with its sequels in (5) the slaying of the mother (fight with the dragon: victory over primal creative but consuming femininity, chthonic forces), and (6) the slaying of the father (symbol of thwarting obstruction of individual achievement, [thwarting] what is new), (7) the freeing of the captive (liberation of the ego from endogamous [i.e., "married" within one's psyche] kinship libido and the emergence of the higher femininity, with woman now as person, anima-sister, related positively to ego consciousness), and finally (8) the transformation (new unity in self-conscious individualization, higher masculinity, expressed primordially in the Osiris myth but today entering new phases with heightened individualism [such as Nietzsche's overman] - or, more properly, personalism - of modern man [sic])."
Ong also sums up Neumann's Jungian account of the stages of consciousness in his (Ong's) book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (Cornell University Press, 1981, pp. 18-19; but also see the "Index" for further references to Neumann [page 228]), the published version of Ong's 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University.
Now, regarding the Great Mother of stage (2) of the eight stages of consciousness, Neumann published The Great Mother" An Analysis of the Archetype, translated from the German by Ralph Manheim (Pantheon Books, 1955).
As you can see, Ong in his 1971 summary of the eight stages of consciousness sees cutting-edge thought "today" (i.e., in 1971) as based on the experience of "the transformation (new unity in self-conscious individualization, higher masculinity, expressed primordially in the Osiris myth but today entering new phases with heightened individualism - or, more properly, personalism - of modern man [sic]."
Nevertheless, on the more popular level of consciousness today, I see our secondary oral culture today in 2024 as representing the widespread movement of many people today, both women feminists and men feminists, into stage seven of the eight stages of consciousness that Neumann discusses - "the freeing of the captive (liberation of the ego from endogamous kinship libido and the emergence of the higher femininity, with woman now as person, anima-sister, related positively to ego consciousness)."
In addition, I see what the Jungian psychoanalyst Edward C. Whitmont refers to as the return of the goddess in the human psyche today as representing in his own favored terminology the widespread movement of many people today, both women feminists and men feminists, into stage seven of the eight stages of consciousness that Neumann discusses.
However, I do not see the misogynist Trump and his many misogynistic male MAGA supporters as feminists. As a result, I do not see them as having yet experienced stage seven of the eight stages of consciousness discussed by Neumann.
In any event, Ong experienced the big breakthrough media ecology insight in the early 1950s that he subsequently never tired of celebrating when he was researching his 1958 massively researched book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Harvard University Press; for specific references to Ong's media-ecology account of our Western cultural history in it, see the entry on aural-to-visual shift in the "Index" [p. 396]). Peter Ramus (1515-1572) was the French Renaissance logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr whose works in logic were extremely influential in his day.
Ong's 1958 massively researched book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue was not only his pioneering media ecology account of our Western cultural history, but also his pioneering account of the print culture that emerged in our Western cultural history after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in Europe in the mid-1450s.
Along with Ong's 1958 massively researched book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, the following four books are also pioneering studies of the print culture that emerged in our Western cultural history after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in Europe in the mid-1450s:
(1) Richard D. Altick's The English common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900 (University of Chicago Press, 1957);
(2) Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin's The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800, translated from the French by David Gerard; edited by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and David Wootton (Verso, 1976; orig. French ed., 1958);
(3) Jurgen Habermas' The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, translated from the German by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (MIT Press, 1989; orig. German ed., 1962);
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