Bring it ONG!

The battle still rages. Or in Ong's terms, the contest for dominance still persists.

So mostly what I've been doing is reaquainting myself with the book and trying to figure out what he contributes to my argument (not that I am writing an argument). Strangely enough, I have NOT found myself throwing his book this time around. Maybe I've been out of grad school long enough to become less angsty and defensive and more relaxed and generous? Here's what is currently striking me and may keep me up tonight.

There are creepy similarities between Helen B. Andelin's The Fascinating Girl.
This point is so huge I have to dwell for a minute. Some of you may know (especially those of you familiar with some of my creative nonfiction work) that I'm ever caught by this book and not necessarily in a good way. It has given me it's own fair share of angst. The book essentializes as much as Ong and both use classic pieces of literature as evidence, or at least as demonstrations of their points, with great frequency. The thing that always bothered me the most about The Fascinating Girl was how much of it rang true--or at least worked. I find myself seeing kernals of what looks like truth in Ong's writings, despite myself.

Ong is sincere. He really believes that contest has functioned "more or less directly to shape the noetic world itself, and specifically its academic development" (28). And that contest "generates intellectual structures, the structures that make science itself" (47). He seems to say that without it, we'd have no knowledge at all, let alone an existence above a primitive one (oh, AND "adversativeness" makes us advanced, not primitive). "Since contest is so pervasive in the evolution of consciousness, there appears to be no way to give a full account of all that contest means to the psyche: its roots are too deep for total excavation" (28).

What is contest, you ask? Well, he goes to GREAT lengths to clarify his definition. It's kind of like competition, but not. And kind of like conflict, but not. And kind of like contention, but not etc, etc. I have sifted through it all for you and here's the basic gist: contest is "a struggle, earnest, possibly but not at all necessarily lethal or even unfriendly, between [...] human beings, entered into to determine dominance of one or another sort. The dominance can be purely ludic, as in a game of amateur sport, or existentially real, as in a lawcase or in war" (44-45).

So how does this all figure in to my paper? Well, feminists beginning (at least in article form) back in the late 70s, started protesting what a lot of them call "adversarial" methods. Ong adds a lot of history, depth, and tradition to that word even if some/a lot/all of it is essentialized and problematic. He's at least trying to explain it, where it comes from, how it has functioned, how it is useful, and for him, why it is necessary. And he definitely makes a case for how entrenched this approach is in academia. You've got to know your enemy before you can take it down, right? And not saying that agonism is necessarily my enemy (not yet, anyway), but it definitely enriches the discussion.

So what is so wrong about Ong? Shall we call them wrOngisms? (I'm having way too much fun with his last name)
Well, for one, he basically says that women can't really take part in this adversativeness/conflict/agonistic tradition because it's in our biology, more specifically our sexual biology. For example, "A mother seems to absorb aggression [...] Anatomically males are not fitted for this creative absorption [intercourse] of aggression and its transformation into life [pregnancy]" (40-41). You can't have conflict without aggression and we really only have aggression when we are protecting our young. Or we mask it (two words: Junior High) in strange social manipulations. It doesn't manifest itself in the ceremonial combat-like manner of men. Or stags (one of his frequent examples).
And even though he says that "Contest has been a major factor in organic evolution and it turns out to have been a major, and indeed seemingly essential, factor in intellectual development," (28) and practically denies women real participation in contest because of biology, he also admits that women do think. And even read. He consistently avoids putting two and two together (which would equal clear chauvinism) but the contradiction is there.

Oh, and there is this interesting element of play necessary to his idea of contest, which is the other reason women are excluded--we don't play well.

But, then, why do I even want to be included? Other than the fact that I'm not fond of arguments that deny me intellectual ability based on biology, I don't know yet.
But his larger thesis that contest is necessary to intellectual development is really interesting and will play a large part in my paper. Granted, I'll probably tweak the definition of "contest" a bit. Can I just leave out entirely the idea of dominance???