Writing and Control
Peter Godfrey-Smith:
The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, in his wry, moody memoir Tristes Tropiques …, discussed this aspect of writing: ‘Writing is a strange invention. One might suppose that its emergence could not fail to bring about profound changes in the conditions of human existence…. It can be thought of as an artificial memory, the development of which ought to lead to a clearer awareness of the past, and hence to a greater ability to organize both the present and the future.’ Perhaps literacy might be seen as a plausible marker of the transition from primitive life to civilization? But then: ‘Yet nothing we know about writing and the part it has played in man’s evolution justifies this view.’ As Lévi-Strauss notes, most of the major transitions in human living occurred without and before writing, and the period after writing was invented included long periods of cultural stagnation. What writing is good for, he says, is controlling people: ‘the integration of large number of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes.’ Tight social control is possible without writing, but writing firms it up.
Living on Earth: Forests, Corals, Conciousness, and the Making of the World, p. 141