Nevertheless, Ong's former teacher at Saint Louis University in the late 1930 and early 1940s, the Canadian Renaissance specialist and cultural historian and pioneering media ecology theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980; Ph.D. in English, Cambridge University, 1943) was inspired by Ong's 1958 book RMDD to write his own widely read follow-up book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press; for specific page references to Ong's publications about Ramus and Ramism, see the "Bibliographic References" [pp. 286-287]). McLuhan's 1962 book has never gone out of print since it was originally published in 1962.
Nevertheless, "the appearance of Derrida's three major works in 1967 [in French]" also eclipsed McLuhan's 1962 book - just as it eclipsed Ong's 1958 and 1967 books.
Theory then for the rest of the century down to this day eclipsed the far more profound work of Ong and McLuhan in media ecology.
Now, toward the end of Eagelton's well-informed review of the late Fredric Jameson's new 2024 book, Eagleton says, "Postmodernists have no great relish for abstractions, think pragmatically rather than historically, and are obsessed by sexuality" (my emphasis)
Even though some have also described Father Ong as a postmodernist himself - perhaps in his own unique way he is - he definitely thought historically - this is one of the hallmarks of his thought.
And Ong cannot accurately be characterized as being "obsessed by sexuality" - or even as being obsessed "with" sexuality. It would surely have been out of character for Ong who was mainlining The Impotent Lover "shadow" forms of both the feminine Lover archetype and the masculine Lover archetype in his psyche to be "obsessed by sexuality."
However, in the subtitle of Ong's profound 1981 book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality [Gender], and Consciousness (Cornell University Press), Ong does use the term Sexuality. But as I have clarified in my square brackets her, he is discussing gender in his 1981 profound book.
But perhaps Ong's day in the sun in academic is yet to come. I certainly hope so.
Ah, but am I in the present essay "obsessed by sexuality" - or am I in the present essay obsessed "with" sexuality. In the present essay, I would say that I am explicitly and understandably obsessed here "with" sexuality. But I do not feel that I am here "obsessed by sexuality" - as Eagleton claims postmodernists are.
See, for example, the late Michel Foucault's four-volume work titled The History of Sexuality (English translation: Volume 1: 1978; Volume 2: 1985; Volume 3 1986; and Volume 4: 2021).
Ah, but does it follow that I have never been obsessed by anything? No. As matter of fact, I have been obsessed by writing each of my more than 640 OEN articles.
However, in each instance above when I have said that I was infatuated "with" a certain woman's beautiful body, I did not say that I was infatuated "by" her beautiful body. Nor did I say that my infatuation "with" her beautiful body caused me to become obsessed "by" or "with" her beautiful body. If I take my own experience of being obsessed with writing each of my more than 640 OEN articles, I have to say that I have to become obsessed like that with any woman's beautiful body.
In conclusion in the process of revisiting Robert Moore's vision of optimal human psychological development in the present essay, I have immeasurably expanded the ways in which his terminology can be applied to a far greater range of people that I discussed in my earlier OEN article "Robert Moore on Optimal Human Psychological Development."
(Article changed on Oct 10, 2024 at 2:29 PM EDT)
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