Learn why the book “The permanent word” is required reading in San Marcos

15 years ago, semiologists and linguists Eduardo Zapata and Juan Biondi they published “The permanent word”, a book that changed our understanding of what is commonly known as orality and that, from a certain academicism, was associated with undeveloped cultures, and that lived in contrast to modern societies supported by the power of writing. Broadly speaking, what Zapata and Biondi raised in that book is that the orality It is not only a traditional mode of expression or a form of communication, but it is something deeper: a cultural horizon that has its own codes, rules and meanings, different from those of the notary and that is manifested daily in the country. This generates a misunderstanding of codes and great exclusion: a scribal dominant minority that seeks to impose its vision of the world on an oral majority.

The book appeared in 2006 when the country was going through a polarized electoral process —like all of this century— and the phenomenon of social networks was taking off, which would end up imposing oral culture on the scribe. Because the other great contribution of the book was to verify that the orality and the Electronality (born of the digital) share the same codes.

Now the Latin American Sociological Association (WINGS) and San Marcos Faculty of Social Sciences celebrate the three decades of the book with a discussion in which the sociologist will participate Jaime Ríos Burga, President of ALAS and Professor San Marcos, the sociologist Guillermo Nugent, the journalist Sonaly Support, the sociologist Moises Rojas, in addition to Eduardo Zapata and Juan Biondi.

“I am not a linguist or semiologist or communicator, but a sociologist who, like many of my generation and the vast majority of the country, lives more in orality and electronality than in writing, since this has always been more of the elites ”Says the teacher Jaime Rios Burga. In his opinion, the validity of the book is due to the fact that “it expresses all the complexity and daily life of our social life in various languages, in a diverse and unique Peru and in an intra-civilization and global transition time.” “Let us not forget,” he adds, “that in our territory there has been a predominantly oral, millenary, mythical civilization that lasts over time, and that with modernity-coloniality it moved towards writing. However, today we are marching towards a new culture of life and consumption of multiple electronic oralities and writings and, precisely, the book by Eduardo Zapata and Juan Biondi captures the codes of these transitions, permanence and changes ”.

For the sociologist, the links between orality and electronicness have subordinated notionality and are manifested in the new corporate, national and popular consumer codes. “Speakers on the street have become the speakers of television shows. The street poets who occupied the Plaza San Martin today are busy doing oral political campaigns, browsing all social networks, creating new cultural and political movements, united with the prophets of the salvation religions, true sellers and saviors of souls. “, it states.

Thus, “The permanent word” has become mandatory reading in San Marcos classrooms. This “because beyond the western heritage – reflects Ríos – we have a millenary Andean civilizing gene that electronic culture – unlike scribal culture – understands better, away from all rationalism and racism.” And also because now the social sciences are concerned with the subjectivities of individuals and orality prevails there. “Orality in a world of growing loneliness calls for life,” says the researcher. “And while Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse will virtually create a new ideal world of life in individualized consumption, the orality of being and knowing will give real democratic meaning to electronic life. A new universal civilizing imaginary that unites what modernity and coloniality separated: the true with the good and the beautiful ”.

The linguist Eduardo Zapata He says that he was pleasantly surprised by the invitation to celebrate the book, as he did not know of the interest that existed in San Marcos for the publication. “It was a book in which we made explicit what it means for us to talk about the cultural systems of orality, scribality and electronality that imply different gnosis, different ways of understanding the world,” he says. For the author, orality is “current and alive in our country.” It is not a thing of the past, but of the present and the future. “When we began the study for the book – he remembers – many said that we were a people with a strong oral tradition, as if that were only a thing of the past, when in reality it is an absolute present, we are a society structured by orality, which today has found a perfect ally in electronality. That certainly has its good side and its bad side. The good thing is the great opportunity presented to Peru to exploit its diversity, to add value to what was there and put it before the world, through the electronic. That represents a huge and very rapid development possibility for Peru ”.

Zapata gives as examples China and India, two deeply oral societies that have made a huge leap from the rise of electronality. However, the electronal also entails a loss of depth. “This is happening not only in Peru but in the world and it deserves a separate discussion,” says the linguist, “because due to electronality the readings are more horizontal than vertical, more superficial than deep. This brings up the problem of the absence of referents in many young electronics, but also in some old writers. Sure, the boys receive a lot of information, but lacking fixed cultural references, it prevents them from processing, linking, systematizing that information and they live in a permanent juxtaposition, they go from one topic to another without a matrix ”.

Another of Zapata’s warnings is to make a distinction between scribe and scriptural. The first believes that the culture of the book is everything and there is no other truth, the second was born in the culture of the book, has the gnosis of the culture of the book, but believes that knowledge does not end in the book, but that appreciates “the living and positive” of orality and electronality.

Organized by the Latin American Sociological Association, the San Marcos Faculty of Social Sciences, the Congress Editorial Fund, the discussion “We celebrate 15 years of The permanent word”Will take place on November 18, at 6:00 pm, and will be broadcast via Zoom. Access: meeting ID: 83067870422, access code 268557