User:Mister detextification/sandbox

Detextification
Detextification is an approach of the media of text as it functions to the academically trained reader. The aim of detextifiction is to identify and overcome tendencies that are typical of highly literate or academic knowledge, especially vis-à-vis and in text, in order to grasp ways of structuring thought in contexts of the spoken and heard word. The former mindset is structured by abstraction or critical thinking - that is, tending to be valid everywhere, every time, and for everyone, whereas the latter is metonymical in nature bound to the collective memory of the specific participants involved. Detextification can be applied in contexts in which both media, and therefore mindsets, interfere, such as the study of ancient literacy and biblical scholarship but also public speaking, preaching, policy making, and communication.

Origin of the approach: studying the Bible from a media perspective
The approach emerges from study of the media functioning of the Bible in present-day biblical scholarship as conducted in Oral Performance and the Veil of Text: Detextification, Paul's Letters, and the Testcase of Gal 2-3 (Ben van Veen, Ph.D. Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam; forthcoming). It is common opinion in biblical scholarship that the biblical documents functioned in a (predominantly) oral context dominated by the spoken word. Detextification is the result of addressing the complex relation between this functioning in the original oral setting and the daily praxis of current biblical scholarship in which these documents function as autonomous texts in an ever-expanding universe of text, detached from its original oral delivery. The argument is that, in addition to the difference in media (oral performance there-and-then versus reading the text here-and-now), it is crucial to differentiate the mindsets involved as well. A highly literate reader in the present structures thought differently from someone in the past who is formed by oral-aural communication. The leading question in detextification when applied to the biblical documents is therefore: How can a biblical scholar here-and-now relate to the text of the letters of Paul (in a printed or digital version) in such a way that he or she can understand how the apostle envisioned his original addressees to understand the documented words (structure their thoughts) in the event of delivery?

"Text": between textum and autonomous text
The Bible, as millenium-old source of Western culture, is pivotal for grasping the contribution of detextification. In line with the communis opinio in biblical scholarship, a performer embodied the message to the actual participants in the moment of delivery. This is oral-aural or body-to-body communication. Therefore, the process of composition was governed by anticipated participation, that is, the composer anticipates the rather specific participation of his intended addressees of certain terms, themes, metaphors, (fragments of) narratives, (fragments of) syllogisms etc. This entails a process of syn- and antonymous metonymy in combination with collective memory. In his article “What is a text? Explanation and Understanding,” Paul Ricoeur identifies this kind of writing as "the inscription of living speech," in which discourse is structured by dialogue between speaker and hearer alike and is presenting the concrete lifeworld to the actual participants in a certain way. Etymologically speaking, one can refer to such documents as textum, that is, the weaving together of speaking and writing in which the latter is determined by the former. In his historical analysis, Ricoeur continues by stating that "writing" emancipated eventually into "text" when " ." In the absence of the writer, text has to speak for itself. More so, he argues that textual discourse or text necessarily represents reality (abstraction). For that reason, we speak of autonomous or autonomously functioning text. This is eye-to-text-area communication. When we turn to the biblical documents once more, it becomes clear that these texta function already for centuries (if not millenia) as texts. Detextification is about addressing the implicated media muddle.