"18. What literary characters or types of characters give particular evidence of polemic structures or performance?"
Because Ong refers to Neumann in point #6 above, perhaps I should explain here that Ong himself discusses Neumann's Jungian work in his book that came out later in 1971, Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (Cornell University Press, pages 10-12 and 18). In it, Ong says the following:
"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] 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])" (pages 10-11).
Ong also succinctly 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, pages 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.
Incidentally, I reviewed Ong's 1971 book Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology in the journal Philosophy and Rhetoric, volume 6 (1973): pages 59-61, and I also reviewed Ong's 1981 book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness in the Jesuit-sponsored magazine America (June 27, 1981): pages 234-236.
For further discussion of Neumann's Jungian account of the stages of consciousness, see my book chapter "Secondary Orality and Consciousness Today" in the book Media, Consciousness, and Culture: Explorations of Walter Ong's Thought, edited by Bruce E. Gronbeck, Thomas J. Farrell, and Paul A. Soukup (Newbury Park, CA; London; New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1991, pages 194-209).
Now, because Ong himself mentions Marxist theory in point #13 above, perhaps I should note here that Ong had an aversion to the Marxist framework of thought. In my estimate, Ong formulated the Greek/barbarian contrast that he works with in the title essay in his 1962 book The Barbarian Within: And Other Fugitive Essays and Studies (Macmillan, pages 260-285) as his preferred way of thinking, instead of thinking in terms of Hegel's master/slave dialectic.
For the sake of discussion, I will differentiate, on the one hand, inner polemic structures such as the psychological processes detailed by Neumann, and, on the other hand, outer polemic structures such as those Johan Huizinga describes in his book Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (Beacon Press, 1955). For Ong, the common denominator, so to speak, in both inner polemic structures and outer polemic structures is the polemic (or agonistic) psycho-dynamism involved.
In my estimate, Plato and Aristotle refer to the psycho-dynamism involved in polemic structures as a part of the human psyche referred to in transliterated Greek as thumos (or thymos). In my estimate, the biological base of the psycho-dynamism involved is the evolutionary layer or part of the human brain that the American neurosurgeon Paul D. MacLean (1913-2007) refers to as the reptilian brain.
In the subtitle of his 1971 book, Ong refers to the interaction of expression (expressing inner polemic structures) and culture (involving outer polemic structures). In his 1977 book Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Cornell University Press), he once again makes a two-fold reference to consciousness (inner polemic structures) and culture (involving outer polemic structures).
Now, Ong famously refers to our still emerging contemporary culture as secondary oral culture, which he differentiates from primary oral culture in pre-historic and pre-literate times. For Ong, our contemporary secondary oral culture involves communications media that accentuate sound.
In any event, insights I gleaned from Ong in his 1971 course on polemic enabled me subsequently to publish my article "The Female and Male Modes of Rhetoric" in the National Council of Teachers of English journal College English, volume 40 (1978-1979): pages 909-921.
In addition, I published the book chapter "Faulkner and Male Agonism" in the book Time, Memory, and the Verbal Arts: Essays on the Thought of Walter Ong, edited by Dennis L. Weeks and Jane Hoogestraat (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1998, pages 203-221).
For a bibliography of Ong's 400 or so distinct publications (not counting translations and reprintings as distinct publications), see Thomas M. Walsh's "Walter J. Ong, S.J.: A Bibliography 1929-2006" in the book Language, Culture, and Identity: The Legacy of Walter J. Ong, S.J., edited by Sara van den Berg and Thomas M. Walsh (New York: Hampton Press, 2011, pages 185-245).
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
