| Yet, if we concur with Heidegger (1962)—or, for that matter (and mutatis mutandis), Ong (1982)—that temporality is the mode of our being, then simultaneity—I shall say synchronicity—might be understood as a way of covering our tracks. I recall the rather cute (if not entirely original) device in the film, Truly, Madly, Deeply (Minghella, 1991). Here, bereavement (a dead lover) could not be closed in the diachronic, being arrested by persistent nostalgia that, in effect, established an edenic synchronicity. The cute device consisted of a rotation in the diegesis whereby the synchronic rotated onto the diachronic (the appearance of the lover’s ghost) allowing the mythical eden to be dismantled, upon which achievement the rotation was reversed. Synchronicity is always edenic (or utopian) and this applies to the synchronicity claimed in the inscription of an image or writing—including autobiographies—the work being presented in its entirety to facilitate any order of reading. It also characterises the poetic devices that facilitate synchronicity in oral cultures (Ong, 1982). Referring to this latter point, we might say that in terms of its form, poetry (whether spoken or written) has a tendency towards greater synchronicity than does prose, though anaphora or cataphora in either is synchronising, mythologising. | ||||||
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home structure & event Hartman Kress speech/time, writing/space diachronicity/synchronicity
Kress writing/image written text image text handwriting text coding coding/temporal 1 Kress spatial/temporal sight/sound coding/temporal 2 IoE 1 Kress entry points IoE 2 IoE 3 Kress power TIMSS Authority Strategies Manzoni Whiteread Institutionalisation/DS Interaction References |
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