1c: Modern Foundations of Literacy

Then write, in your own words, a summary of one of the central concepts/tenets in Goody's work, choose a representative quote (e.g. one that someone who hadn't read Goody can understand) and finally (because this is the most difficult part) ask a question.

Summary:

Goody describes non-literate society as being "homeostatic". Non-literate societies pass on three types of information to new generations: information about day to day life (what plants won't kill you; information about the physical world around them), information about how to act (how to cook the plant that doesn't kill you, or how to cultivate crops), and information about the symbols attached to the words the society uses to communicate. This information about symbols is also related to the collective memory, shared by all members of that society. Information about the past can only be shared through conversation, so in other words, all talk of history is done so in the present. This information is regulated in that the relevant/useful information is remembered, while the information that is no longer relevant is forgotten (and not passed on to future generations). Much like how organic bodies maintain homeostasis through regulation of what comes in and out of cellular structures, so too do non-literate societies regulate what maintains part of the society, and what is discarded as no longer being useful (or, waste).

The social function of memory - and of forgetting - can thus be seen as the final stage of what may be called the homeostatic organization of the cultural tradition in non-literate society. The language is developed in intimate association with the experience of the community, and it is learned by the individual in face-to-face contact with the other members. What continues to be of social relevance is stored in the memory while the rest is usually forgotten: and language - primarily vocabulary - is the effective medium of this crucial process of social digestion and elimination which may be regarded as analogous to the homeostatic organization of the human body by means of which it attempts to maintain its present condition of life.

Question:

I am interested in this idea of the social function of memory and forgetting. While Goody is focusing on non-literate societies in his discussions of memory/forgetting, I can't help but wonder if this is something that is still relevant in 2011. For example, I remember one of my former colleagues bemoaning the fact that they had to go to the archive -- why should they have to do such a thing when "everything has been digitized and mostly available online"? I am left wondering, with the push towards digitization, (for example, digitizing the archive), what happens when something gets missed? If a single piece of paper gets missed when scanning in a whole document, does that piece of paper cease to exist? Sure it exists in a filing cabinet somewhere, but does the digital version become the "real" copy? And of course (probably being cheeky here), if the servers go down and all copies of the data has corrupted, are we not in more danger of losing that knowledge/forgetting than non-literate societies ever were?