COMM 301 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Nat Turner, Interrupt, Corn Syrup
15 Dec 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Heraclitus
Literate Consciousness → writing alters our consciousness and our perspective on the world
by allowing us to objectify language and view it as an object to be examined, crafted,
reflected upon, and disseminated through space and preserved in time.
- Think of writing as an object that you can touch and see.
1. Writing makes language an affair of the eye rather than the ear. I look at it rather than
hearing it. The ear is a very emotional media, such as scary movies, they aren't that scary
without the sound
2. The visual consciousness tends to be linear, distant, individual, analytic, and detached.
When you look at something you piece it apart to make sense of it
3. The written word becomes an object
4. We take a second look at words.
5. Writing releases us from emotional, tribal bonds and liberates the individual mind to
think for itself. We no longer need someone to talk to to communicate about yourself. We
can think to ourselves like a diary
6. Writing makes it possible to formulate rules and laws to transcend immediate
circumstance.
- Examples: Nat Turner American Revolutionary film, Turner's ability to read made him
dangerous, literacy gave him power to see things beyond his own. Reading the Bible for
himself turns it into justification for sacrifice against his masters. He transcends the Bible
by saying this is what God wants.
Mythos → literally just a narrative story. Anything transmitted by word of mouth. In a larger
sense it is a significant story. Can be identified as a myth. A vertical account.
- The vertical is like Zeus and Hades, above and below
- Example: Steel Magnolia, she tells a story about a being a guardian angel, this helps her
get through the grievances
- Example: The Holy Grail Monty Python, king arthur
Logos → refers to story, speech, reason, logic, and account as well as law, divine or mortal.
Compared with mythos, however logos, specifically referred to a rational argument that defend a
position through evidence and an appeal to rules or principles, as one might hear in courtroom
trials. A logos responds to problems by showing how a certain principle or law not only can
sufficiently account for those appearances but can also indicate a path through them. A logos
gives a horizontal understanding of complex play of forces through an ‘account’, which is to say
a description of reality and a plan of action in account with that reality
- Example: Ben Franklin is arguing about slavery and that they have rights that are
embedded in the nature of things, this is a logos. This is close to what Heraclitus says.
Thinking → logos in a literate society stimulates thinking, which is often subordinated in
oral cultures. Thinking does not mean simple consciousness or the capacity to imagine or
remember. It functions alongside two other faculties
- Will pursues objects of our desire by overcoming resistance and channeling energy.
Forward energy
- Judgement decides upon which rules to apply to things, objects. And events in situations
of practical choice
- Thinking isolates us from the demands of the immediate situation in order today;; upon
the meanings of things in order to understand them.
- It's not just closing your eyes and thinking about stuff. It's when you decide things
X vs Y. It's a reflective process.
- Examples: Hidden Figures, library scene, there is the will with the police and
white woman. She takes the book and teaches them they can simply be free
through reading.
- NASA equation scene. These show what the thinking process with the
math symbols
The LOGOS as Ever-Living Fire → For Heraclitus the logos represented unified spiritual
order intended to supplant the anthropomorphic polytheism of archaic greek culture. By
logos he means the definitive account of everything which is, the all encompassing world order
that in turn could be communicated to others through the power of the word
- Logos is something that is within all of us, it is an active force. Consuming and remaking
people and things.
- The purpose of constructing a logos of the Logos is therefore less to articulate the
physical laws of the universe and more to wake up the sleepwalkers, to shock them out of
their communal dream, to disrupt their traditional interpretation of appearances, and to
inspire the thinking which can make them aware of the fire which is burning all around
them.
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- Example: The matrix film, thinking as the program of the matrix as logos.
Appearances → contrasted with ‘disappearances’ with those that do not show themselves.
Like being backstage then going ON stage, you can be seen. Appearances are not the sole
reality, rather partial
Document Summary
Literate consciousness writing alters our consciousness and our perspective on the world by allowing us to objectify language and view it as an object to be examined, crafted, reflected upon, and disseminated through space and preserved in time. Think of writing as an object that you can touch and see: writing makes language an affair of the eye rather than the ear. I look at it rather than hearing it. The ear is a very emotional media, such as scary movies, they aren"t that scary without the sound: the visual consciousness tends to be linear, distant, individual, analytic, and detached. We no longer need someone to talk to to communicate about yourself. We can think to ourselves like a diary: writing makes it possible to formulate rules and laws to transcend immediate circumstance. Examples: nat turner american revolutionary film, turner"s ability to read made him dangerous, literacy gave him power to see things beyond his own.
