Doing something to the listener

I’ve been thinking a lot about my coding (how I categorize relevant quotations and passages from field notes), how it relates to information theory, and how to capture all the things that seem important. There are many elements that contribute to, and in ways co-create, the stories that are told at Carapace: the storyteller, the audience, the venue, the norms of the community, etc. But for the purpose of challenging the conduit metaphor focusing on the “conversation” between teller and audience may be most fruitful. This will overlap with Carapace as a “safe space” since much of what makes it a safe space is dependent upon the audience and benefits the storyteller.

The thought has wandered into my mind a few times that in Orality and Literacy Ong suggests that speaking to another person does something to them (and that this might be relevant here). I take this from a couple of different points he makes. One is that oral cultures “consider words to have great power” (p. 32). One of my favorite passages from this book: “A hunter can see a buffalo, smell, taste, and touch a buffalo when the buffalo is completely inert, even dead, but if he hears a buffalo, he had better watch out: something is going on” (p. 32). Sound is connected with life and action. Ong also says that communication in oral cultures is “agonistic” (p. 43). “By keeping knowledge embedded in the human lifeworld, orality situates knowledge within a context of struggle” (pp. 43-44). He gives the examples of riddles (interactive, tricky), bragging, insult competitions (yo’ mama), and portrayals of physical violence in oral stories (p. 44). I would add jokes to this evidence - a highly oral art form that often hinges on an insult or makes the listener groan.

The spoken word has power. Conversation in oral cultures was agonistic. Talking to someone does something to them. It is not a neutral transfer of information. It is like touching them.

The conversation between audience and teller seems like a fruitful place to keep exploring this idea. Again, obviously related to Carapace as a safe space. The storyteller does something to the audience by speaking. The audience members do something back when they laugh or call out or clap. The agonistic interaction has some ground rules determined by the norms of the community - giving the storyteller license to antagonize the audience, by not only speaking, but telling potentially uncomfortable stories. Audience members are not invited to antagonize the storyteller, but could become storytellers themselves.

This thing that you are doing by telling a story, given Ong’s examples, should be provocative. It should make the listener want to respond, engage, do something back. The agonistic nature of orality is very connected to the back and forth that can happen. This has perhaps lessened with media that encourage unidirectional communication (books). And I have suspected for a while that the Internet is so full of agony because it has brought back more interactive communication.