In the 1970s and 1980s, the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong (1912-2003) and the French philosopher and cultural historian Michel Foucault (1926-1984), evidently independently of one another, explored sexuality/gender. In the present review essay, I discuss certain features of their explorations.

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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) July 25, 2021: My favorite scholar is the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955). Over the years, I took five courses from Ong at Saint Louis University (SLU), the Jesuit university in St. Louis, Missouri.

In the summer session in 1971, about fifty years ago now, with Father Ong's permission, I unofficially audited his interdisciplinary graduate course on Polemic in Literary and Academic Tradition: An Historical Survey. The class met from 7:30 a.m. to 8:50 a.m. daily on weekdays in an air-conditioned conference room in Pius XII Memorial Library at SLU.

I think that Ong first offered his polemic course in the spring semester of 1971. In any event, a graduate student who took it then told me about it. In any event, James Brown McGinnis III (1942-2009; Ph.D. in philosophy, Saint Louis University 1974), a graduate student in philosophy and the first director of the SLU Institute for the Study of Peace and Justice, arranged to have Ong teach the polemic course again in the summer of 1971 for certain students recruited through the Institute.

Now, by the summer of 1971, the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) had made a strong international reputation for himself. Nevertheless, as far as I can recall, Ong did not mention Foucault in his summer of 1971 course.

However, in 1969, Foucault was elected to the prestigious College de France. He designated his chair as the history of systems of thought - presumably including Western philosophy as a system of thought. By 1969 when Foucault became chair of the history of systems of thought, Ong had long considered Western philosophy as a system of visualist thought - see, for example, 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). For further discussion of Ong's account of visualist thought in Western philosophy, see my lengthy OEN article "Walter J. Ong's Philosophical Thought" (dated September 20, 2020):

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In any event, for Foucault, the period 1970-1984 was a remarkably productive period in his life. In this remarkably productive period in his life, he prepared what have now been published as four volumes in The History of Sex (1976, 1984a, 1984b, and, unfinished but substantially completed, 2018 in French; 1978, 1985, 1986, and 2021, respectively, in English). However, after Foucault had published volume 1 in 1976, in which he had announced his plan for subsequent volumes, he subsequently changed his plans drastically for volumes 2, 3, and 4, as I will explain momentarily below.

Now, the material that Ong worked up in his 1971 polemic course eventually became his 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University and then his 1981 book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (Cornell University Press) - in which he does not mention Foucault's volume 1 of The History of Sex (1976 in French; 1978 in English).

The present review essay will unfold in the following two parts: (1) Michel Foucault's Testimony and (2) Walter J. Ong's Testimony.

MICHEL FOUCAULT'S TESTIMONY

As mentioned, Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was elected to the prestigious College de France in 1969, which obliged him to deliver a public series of lectures each year. He himself designated his chair as the history of systems of thought. He was already internationally famous. In the period 1970-1984, he was enormously productive. In addition to his annual public lecture courses at the College de France, he delivered lecture series and faculty seminars in the United States and elsewhere. Edited versions of his lectures at the College de France and in the United States and elsewhere were published after his untimely death in 1984 at the age of 57. In addition, numerous edited interviews with Foucault were published, which also should be counted as among his publications.

For informative accounts of the various themes that emerged in Foucault's thought in his books and lectures in the remarkably productive period 1970-1984, see The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon, edited by Leonard Lawlor and John Nale (2014; paperback ed., 2020).

In the period 1970-1984, Foucault published in French volume 1 of The History of Sexuality series in 1976, which was translated into English as The History of Sexuality: Volume 1: An Introduction, translated from the French by Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).

Volume 1 in French was subtitled The Will to Know. Foucault's lecture course at the College de France in 1970-1971 was also titled The Will to Know. So his earlier lectures were later published as Lectures on the Will to Know: Lectures at the College de France 1970-1971 and "Oedipal Knowledge" edited by Daniel Defert; translated from the French by Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013; orig. French ed., 2011).

In volume 1, Foucault announces his plan for the further volumes in the series. However, he subsequently drastically revised his plans for the further volumes in the series. Before his untimely death in 1984 at the age of 57, he prepared volumes 2, 3, and, substantially, 4 for publication, but volume 4 was unfinished when he died.

Volume 2, published in French in 1984, was published in English as The Use of Pleasure: Volume 2 of The History of Sexuality, translated from the French by Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985).

Volume 3, published in French in 1984 in French, was published in English as The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of The History of Sexuality, translated from the French by Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986).

Volume 4, published, unfinished but substantially completed, in French in 2018, was published in English as Confessions of the Flesh: The History of Sexuality: Volume 4, translated from the French by Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 2021).

Now, in volume 2's "Introduction: Modifications" (pages 1-13), Foucault explains his new plan for volumes 2, 3, and 4 in the series. He explains the three axes that constitute what he refers to as "sexuality" as follows:

"(1) the formation of sciences (savoir) that refer to it [sexuality as he is now operationally defining and explaining it], (2) the systems of power that regulate its practice [i.e., the practice of sexuality as he is now operationally defining and explaining it], [and] (3) the forms within which individuals are able, are obliged, to recognize themselves as subjects of this sexuality [as he is now operationally defining and explaining it]. Now, as to the first two points, the work that I had undertaken previously - having to do first with medicine and psychiatry, and then with punitive power and disciplinary practices - provided me with the tools I needed ["as to the first two points"]. [1] The [philosophical] analysis of discursive practices made it possible to trace the formation of disciplines (savoirs) ["that refer to" sexuality as he is now operationally defining and explaining it] while escaping the dilemma of science versus ideology. [2] And the [philosophical] analysis of power relations and their technologies [in Foucault's previous work] made it possible to view them as open strategies, while escaping the alternative of a power conceived of as domination or exposed as simulacrum.

"[3] But when I came to study the modes according to which individuals are given to recognize themselves as sexual subjects, the problems [of philosophical analysis] were much greater. At the time the notion of desire, or of the desiring subject, constituted if not a theory, then at least a generally accepted theoretical theme [in philosophical analysis]. This very acceptance was odd: it was the same theme, in fact, or variations thereof, that was found not only at the very center of the traditional theory, but also in the conceptions that sought to detach themselves from it. It was this theme, too, that appeared to have been inherited, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from a long Christian tradition. While the experience of sexuality, as a singular historical figure, is perhaps quite distinct from the Christian experience of the 'flesh,' both appear nonetheless to be dominated by the principle of 'desiring man.' In any case, it seemed to me that one could not very well analyze the formation and development of the experience of sexuality from the eighteenth century onward, without doing a historical and critical study dealing with desire and the desiring subject. In other words, without undertaking a 'genealogy.' This does not mean that I proposed to write a history of successive conceptions of desire, of concupiscence, or of libido, but rather to analyze the practices by which individuals were led to focus their attention on themselves, to decipher, recognize, and acknowledge themselves as subjects of desire, bringing into play between themselves and themselves a certain relationship that allows them to discover, in desire, the truth of their being, be it natural or fallen. In short, with this genealogy the idea was to investigate how individuals were led to practice, on themselves and on others, a hermeneutics of desire [i.e., a way to interpret desire], a hermeneutics of which their sexual behavior was doubtless the occasion, but certainly not the exclusive domain. Thus, in order to understand how the modern individual could experience himself as a subject of a 'sexuality,' it was essential first to determine how, for centuries, Western man had been brought to recognize himself as a subject of desire" (pages 4-6).

In this passage, Foucault does not indicate exactly when "the modern individual" emerged in Western culture

In any event, what Foucault here refers to as "a hermeneutics of desire" is virtually the equivalent of what is referred to in Jesuit spirituality as the process of discernment of spirits. But Foucault was familiar with the Jesuits and with the Counter-Reformation and even with the ancient Western Christian monastic practices involving discernment of spirits - as can be seen in Foucault's unfinished but substantially completed book Confessions of the Flesh.

Ong discusses the Jesuit practice of discernment of spirits in his book Hopkins, the Self, and God (University of Toronto Press, 1986, esp. pages 78-81), in which Ong also discusses the Catholic practice of confession (pages 99-106).

For further reading about the practice of confession, see Chloe Taylor's book The Culture of Confession from Augustine to Foucault: A Genealogy of the "Confessing Animal" (New York and London: Routledge, 2009).

Now, in volume 2's "Introduction: Modifications," Foucault also says the following:

"A theoretical shift [from his thinking in the 1976 volume 1 of The History of Sexuality] had seemed necessary to analyze what was often designated as the advancement of learning; it [the shift] led me to examine [1] the forms of discursive practices that articulated the human sciences. A theoretical shift had also been required in order to [2] analyze what is often described as the manifestations of 'power': it [the shift] led me to examine, rather, the manifold relations [in the spirit of Ong's relationist thesis], the open strategies [characterized by Ong as open closure?], and the rational techniques that articulate the exercise of powers. It appeared that I now had to undertake a third shift, in order to analyze what is termed 'the subject.' It seemed appropriate to look for the forms and modalities of the relation to self by which the individual constitutes and recognizes himself qua subject. After [1] first studying the games of truth (jeu de verite) in their interplay with one another, as exemplified by certain empirical sciences in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and then [2] studying their interactions with power relations, as exemplified by punitive practices - I felt obliged to [3] study the games of truth in the relationship of self with self and the forming of oneself as a subject [as exemplified, for example, in the Western Christian practice of discernment of spirits], taking as my domain of reference and field of investigation what might be called 'the history of desiring man'" (page 6).

In brackets above, I have called attention to how what Foucault refers to as open strategies may be connected to what Ong refers to as open closure in his essay "Voice and the Opening of Closed Systems" in his 1977 book Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Cornell University Press, pages 305-341).

In brackets above. I have also called attention to Foucault's reference to examining the manifold relations - indeed, interactions - of open strategies and the rational techniques that articulate the exercises of power, on the one hand, and, on the other, Ong's sweeping relationist thesis. Ong delineates his relationist thesis in his "Preface" to his 1977 book Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Cornell University Press, pages 9-13). He says the following in the first sentence: "The present volume carries forward work in two earlier volumes by the same author, The Presence of the Word (1967) and Rhetoric Romance, and Technology (1971)." He then discusses these two earlier volumes.

Then Ong says the following: "The thesis of these two earlier works is sweeping, but it is not reductionist, as reviewers and commentators, so far as I know, have all generously recognized: the works do not maintain that the evolution from primary orality through writing and print to an electronic culture, which produces secondary orality, causes or explain everything in human culture and consciousness. Rather, the thesis is relationist: major developments, and very likely even all major developments, in culture and consciousness are related, often in unexpected intimacy, to the evolution of the word from primary orality to its present state. But the relationships are varied and complex, with cause and effect often difficult to distinguish" (page 9-10).

Thus Ong himself claims (1) that his thesis is "sweeping" but (2) that the shifts do not "cause or explain everything in human culture and consciousness" and (3) that the shifts are related to "major developments, and very likely even all major developments, in culture and consciousness."

Major cultural developments include the rise of modern science, the rise of modern capitalism, the rise of representative democracy, the rise of the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of the Romantic Movement in philosophy, literature, and the arts.

In effect, Ong implicitly works with this thesis in his massively researched 1958 book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Harvard University Press), mentioned above - his major exploration of the influence of the Gutenberg printing press that emerged in the mid-1450s. Taking a hint from Fr. Ong's massively researched 1958 book, Marshall McLuhan worked up some examples of his own in his sweeping 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press).

Next in Ong's 1977 "Preface," he explains certain lines of investigation that he further develops in Interfaces of the Word. Then he says, "At a few points, I refer in passing to the work of French and other European structuralists - variously psychoanalytic, phenomenological, linguistic, or anthropological in cast" (page 10). Ong liked to characterize his own thought as phenomenological and personalist in cast.

Now, Ong is not everybody's cup of tea, figuratively speaking. Consider, for example, Ong's own modesty in the subtitle of his seminal 1967 book The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (Yale University Press), the expanded published version of Ong's 1964 Terry Lectures at Yale University. His wording "Some Prolegomena" clearly acknowledges that he does not explicitly claim that his thesis as he formulated it in his 1977 "Preface" does "explain everything in human culture and consciousness" - or every cause -- but that the shifts he points out are "sweeping."

Now, please note just how careful and cagey Ong's wording is when he says that his account of the evolution of certain changes does not "explain everything in human culture and consciousness" - or every cause.

On the one hand, Ong's terminology about primary oral culture (and primary orality, for short; and his earlier terminology about primarily oral culture) is sweeping inasmuch as it refers to all of our pre-historic human ancestors.

On the other hand, his cagey remark about sorting out cause and effect does not automatically rule out the possibility that certain changes somehow contributed to the eventual historical development of writing systems and specifically phonetic alphabetic writing (= literacy) as well as to the historical development of human settlement in agriculture (or agrarian) societies and economies.

For further discussion of Foucault's The History of Sexuality, see Chloe Taylor's The Routledge Guidebook to Foucault's The History of Sexuality (London and New York: Routledge, 2017).

WALTER J. ONG'S TESTIMONY

Now, as you will see momentarily, the polemic course was a compendium of Ong's thought. For the record, I thought I'd record here the material on the one-page dittoed handout that Ong gave us in that course:

"1. Explain the relation of the hero to oral culture.

"2. What are topoi (loci, commonplaces)?

"3. What does Freud mean by the 'discontents' or 'discomforts' (Unbehagen)?

"4. What is the nature of narrative? That is, what is the relation of a verbal account of an event or sequence of events to the event or sequence of events itself? Or, what is the relationship of the historian's 'Battle of Gettysburg' to the experiences of individuals involved in what was going on in southern Pennsylvania July 1-3, 1863?

"5. What are some of the ways territoriality and combat are related to animal species below man?

"6. What does Neumann mean by the origins and history of consciousness?

"7. How is polemic related to educational practices of the past and present?

"8. Discuss some differences between combat among males and among females.

"9. Discuss the relationship between play and work.

"10. Discuss the relationship of play to polemic.

"11. If struggle between individual human beings is a necessary part of human existence, on what can we found the possibilities of permanent peace among individual human beings? among nations?

"12. What relationship does the structure of the Federal Government in the United States (legislative, executive, judiciary branches) bear to polemic?

"13. Do you know anything about the structures of interpersonal polemic and ideological polemic in Marxist theory and/or politics?

"14. What are some qualities of the polemic structures in the business world?

"15. What literary genres are particularly connected with polemic and in what ways?

"16. What is the relation of polemic to oral culture, to chirographic-typographic culture?

"17. What are the likenesses and differences between primary and secondary oral cultures?

"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).

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview