| Notes | '92 - summary paragraph in conclusion\n\nI have tried to refute a number of \'myths\' about memory in oral cultures. Exact verbatim recall is in general more difficult than in written ones, partly because there is often no call for word-for-word repetition of a recitation like the Bagre. Every performance is also a creative act and there is no distinct separation between performer and creator; that dichotomy does not exist. For, pace Jacques Derrida {whom Goody misunderstands}, there is no archive {93} in oral cultures of the same kind as our Public Record Office or the early libraries at Ebla or Alexandria. Of course, a greater part of culture is carried in the mind, especially language, but not always in a fixed archival way; hence dialects proliferate. Like all cultures, oral ones depend on stored knowledge; however, much of this is stored in a way that cannot be recalled precisely, in the manner we usually relate to the psychological operation of memory. It is, as I have said, re-worked experience.\n'
'90-92 Replication and diversification\n\n{90} It is a mistake to view the handing down of culture as the exact counterpart of genetic transmission, a kind of cultural mimesis; genetic reproduction is largely self-replicating, but human learning involves generative processes, what has been called \'learning to know\'. Some changes in teh corpus take place because of pressures from the outside, forcing or encouraging adjustment; others occur because of deliberately creative acts which have little to do with adjustments of this kind.\n\nHis argument is that the absence of writing accelerates this process of diversification which nevertheless entails a kind of stasis, whereas writing begets this sort of stability that is conducing the accumulation and progress.'
'86-90 - The Bagre myth\n\"the Bagre myth of the LoDagaa of northern Ghana\" {86}- with whom Goody worked: comparison of recordings (his research seems somewhat invasive of a secret society ) shows that variation, rather than consistency, is the rule.'
'83 - paradox that verbatim memory is more a feature of so-called literate cultures.'
'81-2 Midewin example\n\nIn his account of the birchbark scrolls of the Ojibway of Canada, S. Dewdney explores the question of how in one particular form of shamanism, the teacher\'s version of a myth is prompted by a series of drawings. These map out, for example, the journey of a hero or the migration of a clan, and indicate the events gthat happened on the way. These graphics are not writing in {82} the full sense of the word. They serve as a mnemonic. No two interpreters will give altogether the same interpretation, even if they have learnt from the same master at the same time. This means that the divergence between one version and another is of an order quite different from that between two readers of the same linguistic text.\n'
'74 - face to face\n\nCommunication in oral cultures takes place overwhelmingly in face-to-face situations. Basically, information is stored in teh memory, in the mind. Without writing there is virtually no storage of information outside the human brain and hence no distance communication over space and over time.\n'
'76-83 - Mnemonic systems\n\n{76} These mnemonics are material objects and sometimes graphic signs that fall short of fully fledged writing becasue they do not record linguistic expressions per se but only loosely refer to them.\n{77} Mnemonic systems present you with It is there that if I recite a short tale and offer you a mnemonic, you may be able to repeat it almost exactly. But such reproduction depends upon my telling you the tale and showing you the mnemonic. No one else can read it off directly from the object. There is no precise distance communication as there is with writing, which provides a fixed, society-wide code enabling us to establish more or less perfect linguistic communication over distance in time and space with people we may have never met but who have learnt the code.\n'
'76 Memory in oral cultures\n\nAll cultural knowledge in oral cultures is stored in the mind, largely because there is little alternative. When we congratulate the members of oral cultures on their good memories, on one level we are simply saying that they have no other storage option. In contrast we can pul down boos from our library shelves and consult them to find the reference for a quotation we vaguely remember, or to discover the name of a bird we did not know.\nWhat is clear is that much oral knowledge is not stored in the precise way we think of in literate cultures when we talk of memory. In fact non-literates are often in the sate of having a vague recollection in their heads, but of being unable to refer to a book in the way that we do. Hence they may just have to create new knowledge or new variants to fill the gap.\n'
'74 - aims to debunk \"tale of the phenomenal feats of memory\" in oral cultures.\n\nIt is true that such societies are largely dependent on internal memory for transmitting culture, for the handing down of knowledge and customs from one generation to the next. However, they do not remember everything in perfect form, that is, verbatim, by heart. I have kown many people quite unable to give a consecutive account of the complex sequence of funeral or initiation rites. But, when the ceremonies actually start, one act leads to another until all is done; one person\'s recollection with help another.\n'
'73 - Defines \"oral tradition\":\n\nUnlike many other scholars, I use the phrase \'oral tradition\' to refer to what is transmitted orally in literate cultures. The two forms of oral transmission in societies with and without writing are often conflated, and that has been the case in the well-known work of Parry and Lord on the \'orality\' of Homer. Most epics are the products of literate cultures even if they are performed orally.\nOral performance in literate societies is undoubtedly influenced to different degrees by the presence of writing and should not be identified with the products of purely oral cultures.\n\nDespite his definition, the essay is really more about oral transmission in so-called oral cultures....'
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