Conversations of Thought :: Conversating Thinking thoughts Essays

Conversations of Thought There are written and read conversations taking place this very moment. The written conversation is one that happens between me (ongoing thought- conversation) and what is written onto paper. The read conversation takes place when a person, other than me, picks up what I’ve written and reads it. Thought-conversation is going on in my writing to you today; there are some going on in collegiate assembly halls, and in the conscious minds of many. However, I cannot—nor can you at the moment—read (make believe you’re not reading this right now---oops, I’ve just Ong’ed you) or hear most of these arguments, debates, agreements, disagreements, assertions that carry on. If that is true we are fine for the moment. Granted, one is standing adjacent to and overhearing an English seminar that is discussing and synthesizing the views and works of a range of the most influential modern theorists of the humanities and social sciences. This confined seminar ( audience) is expected to interact with, value, debate, and/ or construct opinions for or against a text—thus leading some to new thought-conversational thought processes. This, however, excludes the standby-audience member, the reader-listener, as an active participant of the dominant- authoritative discourse from that seminar. Hence, the author’s (the professor) methodology creates a specific, yet unrestrained, â€Å"aimed-towards them† discourse and not for the standby reader-listener. â€Å"His† audience (who says that an audience is his anyway?) will have to later â€Å"write†, â€Å"talk† and â€Å"think† about texts. This notion does not stand alone—paradoxically speaking of the standby reader-listener who is standing alone and adjacent to the seminar. These â€Å"standby† reader-listeners aren’t â€Å"intentionally† or even, in this case, â€Å"fictionally† given the right to speak in this confined pre-registered, fore-planned discourse. Likewise, they aren’t fictionally thought of as potential readers. With this analogy, I find confluence in central arguments made by Ong, Bartholomae and Foucault that are worth mentioning. I am not disputing the rhetoric of these three great thinkers/ readers. I am simply attempting to â€Å"define a position of privilege, a position that sets [me] against a ‘common’ discourse†¦Ã¢â‚¬  working â€Å"self-consciously, critically, against not only the ‘common’ code but [my] own† (Bartholomae 644). However, for now, I am suggesting that a reader doesn’t â€Å"have to play the role in which the author has cast him† (Ong 60), but that there is more to it.