Discussing the problem of thinking about oral traditions as oral literature Ong says, "Writing makes 'words' appear similar to things because we think of words as the visible marks signaling words to decoders: we can see and touch such inscribed 'words' in texts and books. Written words are residue. Oral tradition has no such residue or deposit... [the use of the preposterous term oral literature] reveals our inability to represent to our own minds a heritage of verbally organized materials except as some variant of writing, even when they have nothing to do with writing at all" (11). So according to Ong the problem for a literate culture in attempting to understand an oral culture is the problem of gettting around the idea of a "text." Literate cultures are greatly dependent on written texts in order to create and support their thoughts concerning anything that they encounter in life. Ong continues to say of the problem of thinking about oral traditions as texts, "But in fact, when literates today use the term 'text' to refer to oral performance, they are thinking of it by ananlogy with writing. In the literate's vocabulary, the 'text' of a narrative by a person form a primary oral culture represents a back-formation: [such as coming to an idea of what a horse is by thinking of it as a wheeless car]" (13). This is a problem because of course an oral tradition is not based on any form of a text(s) but rather on a use of formulas that allow oral practitioners to retain their complex thoughts or stories. (34-5).
While reading Ong's text, I could not help but think about our class discussions about the role of anthologies in Ethnopoetics. I seem to be caught in the same trap that I continually find myself trapped in week after week: yes, taking portions of oral traditions and turning them into a book, tends to take alot of the orality out of them but at the same time it would seem to be such a gross error to not take oral traditions into account. And I don't think that Ong is advocating that there should not be any anthologies of oral traditions, instead I feel he would urge us to never stop thinking critically about how we are engaging with oral traditions in a written form. It is this idea that I liked most about Ong's book, as it has reminded me to continue to not only read selections from "Symposium of the Whole" and "Technicians of the Sacred" but to be critical about how I read them. To always be aware that I am textualizing oral traditions when I encounter them. I think that is one of the keys of Ong's book, to create an awareness of of our own textuality and maybe in being aware of that fact, one can experience something different the next time one is encountering an oral tradition.