For further discussion of Pete Walker's book, see my OEN review essay "You Are Suffering from Complex PTSD":
ONG'S SIXTH BOOK-LENGTH STUDY
Now, as I have briefly indicated above in my thumbnail comments about Ong's three books published in the 1980s, each of them sums up and synthesizes certain themes in his multidimensional thought in his earlier books and essays. So what more could Ong have possibly hoped to work out in his projected grand synthesis in his sixth book-length study? Or was he hoping that his projected new book would at long last finally be a breakthrough book that would bring his thought to a larger audience than the audience that he had already attained? Like Ong himself, I would welcome a broader interest in his work among well-educated people in general and among scholars. But regardless of whatever more Ong may have hoped to accomplish in it and through it, he did not complete that projected sixth book-length study.
Now, William J. Kennedy in comparative literature at Cornell University, author of the book Petrarchism at Work: Contextual Economies in the Age of Shakespeare Cornell University Press, 2016), supplied the following blurb for Cornell University Press to use regarding Ong's posthumously published incomplete book: "Language as Hermeneutic is fresh and startlingly relevant. This short book could have an important impact on issues of cognition, interpretation, and reception of literary and philosophical texts in an era of technological and media transformation."
In my estimate, almost all of Ong's mature publications strike me as "fresh and startlingly relevant." Ong just had a knack for making his writing sound fresh. As to his mature publications being startlingly relevant, yes, almost all of his mature publications strike me as startlingly relevant today. However, I admit that their relevance today is in the mind of the beholder.
Yes, to be sure, Ong does indeed truly dwell on cognitive processes in this short book, as does Lonergan in his much lengthier book Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, mentioned above. But here is the key question: As we learn to disidentify with certain cognitive tendencies in Western philosophical thought, does our evolving disidentification with learned cognitive tendencies lead us toward what Lonergan refers to as affective conversion?
Perhaps we should note here that Cornell University Press published three earlier books by Ong, all mentioned above: (1) Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (1971); (2) Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (1977); (3) Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (1981). Using print-on-demand technology, Cornell University Press has brought Ong's three earlier books back into print in paperback editions.
But enough prelude!
Here are the titles of the parts of Ong's posthumously published book by Ong himself:
Prologue (pages 11-19)
(1) Orality, Writing, Presence (pages 20-24)
(2) Hermeneutics, Textual and Other (pages 25-35)
(3) Affiliations of Hermeneutics with Texts (pages 36-39)
(4) The Interpersonalism of Hermeneutics, Oral and Other (pages 40-49)
(5) Hermeneutics, Print, and "Facts" (pages 50-54)
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