Dear Jinan,
I fear you don't understand that, as far as I (and others) are concerned, all gibbering about "femininity" is not just intellectual nonsense, but also deeply offensive to deeply-held spiritual values. If you are able to respect cultures in which people don't eat pork, or cover their heads in public, then when you speak to me you must also respect my Western feminist culture on this point. Not all culture is good culture, and it is fair to note that women's rights are a growing issue in India, also, as shown this past New Year's Day by the long line of women holding hands in Kerala to support gender equality. That line was 620-km long — a huge number of women demonstrating that they really care about what they perceive as harmful discrimination in their culture.
You might, of course, argue that by the word "femininity" you aim to describe a characteristic that is not specific to women alone. If that is the case, then all you have to do is find a different word; one that describes your characteristic directly, rather than by using a misleading and offensive sexual metaphor. There are many other words that are normally avoided in scholarly debate: add this one to the list.
Back to the more interesting discussion of literacy, I don't think it is possible to argue that literacy is the ground behind the living person; and I don't think you have grasped the point of the truism "the medium is the message." In the truism, a "medium" is anything meaningful in the world, including writing, but also clothes and cars. McLuhan defines "media" as "the extensions of man[kind]" which accurately captures the ways in which human technologies extend innate human abilities. A cup extends cupped hands; a telephone extends the voice and ears; writing extends memory and calculation. "Meaning" in the truism describes a medium's impact rather than its content. The content of a TV show may be dolphins; its impact is that the family sits in a row facing the TV, rather than gathered to face each other.
The essential books here are "Understanding Media" (1964) and "The Gutenberg Galaxy" (1962). However, McLuhan's writing is often hard to follow, and I would recommend instead the "The Laws of Media" (1988), which was co-authored by his better-organized son Eric, as well as "City as Classroom" (1977), which includes some interesting student exercises.
Even better for your work might be the wonderful book: "Oh What A Blow That Phantom Gave Me!" (1974) by anthropologist Edmund Carpenter (an early collaborator with McLuhan). Carpenter spent time in New Guinea with tribes who had never seen a mirror or a photograph before, let alone a book, and describes the impact of these media when they are seen for the first time. The title is a quote from the novel "Don Quixote" (1605 & 1615). After the hero is knocked off his horse by what he thought was a giant (it was actually a windmill), people tell him that the giant was only a phantom that didn't exist except in his mind. Quixote exclaims that even if it was just a phantom, it still gave him a mighty blow — just like media do.
To avoid boring the pants off everyone else, we can continue a discussion of McLuhan privately, if you wish.
As ever,Heidi
On Sunday, February 17, 2019, 11:17:53 a.m. EST, Jinan K B <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dear Heidi
Thank you for the link Robert K. Logan (2011). Figure/Ground: Cracking
the McLuhan Code.
www.e-compos.org.br/e-compos/article/download/709/548/0
Figure-ground clarifies my own process. I am also a person who focuses
on the ground or the condition or the context that enable things to
happen.
The fragmentation is caused by the dependence on literacy. So literacy
is the ground and fragmented humans are the figure. So also
masculinity is the figure and printed text is the ground.
If you look closely you will understand that the rise of feminism
coincides with images coming into the book and so also the movies, and
television. The image begins to reactivate seeing. It is the
reactivation of the sense that awakens the feminine qualities. But due
to the dominance of the printed text even in this situation, the
feminine is still within the masculine.
But digitality is turning all this upside down. The feminine seems to
be dominating in this context. It seems to be feminizing the males
also. the present digital world is predominantly feminine
(fragmented). The generation that is brought up in the digital
environment is going to be feminine.
Medium is not the only just the message but also our formative source.
We are formed or shaped by what we engage with. The content not only
dictates the process but also instills its qualities in us in order
for us to make sense of it. In order for us to 'understand' the
innocence of a child, we have to have the quality of innocence. This
is true for everything we engage with. So in order to understand the
printed word the whole attributes/ properties/ structure/ organization
by which the printed word is made will have to be developed in each of
us to engage with it.
The eye has to change from its normal way of seeing. In fact, it
learns to stop seeing and start thinking. From unfocused attention and
peripheral vision, it learns to be focussed and bounded by the size of
the source. Slowly the ability to SEE gets numbed and we become
physically absent and mentally present.
Somewhere McLuhan mentions that the root meaning of the word reading
is 'rapid guessing'. So in fact by reading we are just making our own
convenient stories! (I call this appropriation)
The most crucial thing to be revisited is about childhood. what kind
of environment needs to be provided so that their integrity is
retained, they are autonomous, biocentric and life-sustaining.
But I doubt whether 'modernity' will be able to do this with its
strange biases and beliefs.
--
Jinan,
TEXT DISTORTS, DIGITAL DESTROYS, WORLD AWAKENS
http://jinankb.in/
http://existentialknowledgefoundation.org/
http://rethinkingfoundation.weebly.com/
http://sadhanavillageschool.org/
https://www.youtube.com/user/sadhanavillagepune
https://www.youtube.com/user/jinansvideos
www.re-cognition.org
https://independent.academia.edu/JinanKodapully
09447121544
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