Kaschula (2004) coined the term, ‘technauriture’ as an alternative analytical recourse for comprehending the intersection of orality, the written word and digital technology. Kaschula and Mostert (2011:3) explain its etymology:
Regarding its etymology, the ‘techn’ represents technology; the ‘auri’ derives from the word ‘auriture,’ and the ‘ture’ represents literature. Auriture alone, as used by Coplan (1994:9), implies the use of a range of senses in one’s appreciation of the oral word: hearing, speaking and the more abstract aesthetic analysis of a word. Auriture has been suggested in place of orature, orality or oraural, the latter a rather clumsy term introduced by Kishani (2001:27). Technauriture attempts to embrace the dichotomies acknowledged by Ong and Finnegan, and to firmly place the debate regarding orality and oral traditions in a 21st-century discourse that implicates contemporary modes of technology.
Kaschula and Mostert consider Ong and Finnegan’s critical engagement with the orality/ literacy dichotomy as the backdrop against which ‘technauriture’ is predicated. As they argue, the “pre-internet” Ong (1982) expresses great reservations with the use of the term ‘oral literature’ as referent to oral traditions and performative genres, (ibid: 3). While Ong (1982:9) acknowledges that human beings “in primary oral cultures …learn a great deal and possess and practice great wisdom,” he insisted that they do not study “oral tradition or a heritage of oral performance, genres and styles as “oral literature” (Ong 1982:12).
Against Ong’s background, Finnegan is “emphatic in her recognition of the role of oral poetry and, by extension, orality, and its innate value to human society” (Kaschula and Mostert, 2011:3). Finnegan (1977:2, in Kaschula and Mostert, 2011:3) claim that:
It is difficult to argue that they [oral poets] should be ignored as aberrant or unusual in human society, or in principle outside the normal field of established scholarly research. In practice there is everything to be gained by bringing the study of oral poetry into the mainstream of work on literature and sociology.
Henceforth, Finnegan popularised the term ‘orature,’ (a 1970s Zirimu’s coinage,) in her attempt to mediate between ‘oral’ and ‘written’ literatures, and “to address the fissure highlighted in the debates in terms of the contradiction associated with the term ‘oral literature’” (Kaschula and Mostert, 2011:3). They further assert:
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At the time that the term ‘orature’ was coined, Finnegan had recognised the innate artistic qualities of oral performances and aspired to ‘upgrade’ oral genres by using the term literature (oral genres as art and not only as lore). On the other hand, focusing on the consequences of viewing orality and literacy as different technologies, and emphasising the dichotomy, Ong saw the development from orality to literacy as inevitable (1982:175). Today, orality or ‘orature’, literacy and technology coexist, and while many societies wish to embrace literacy, this does not mean that ‘orature’ is necessarily rejected. The term ‘orature’, and the resolution it brings to earlier dichotomies, may then be seen as a precursor to ‘technauriture.’ (Ibid: 3).
The concept of technauriture, inclusive of “all existing and foreseeable aspects of the evolving nature of orality and its written counterparts,” (ibid: 3) places orality on an equal footing with the application of technology,
The impetus for technauriture as a theoretical construct gained momentum following the 9th Conference of International Society for the Oral Literatures of Africa, (ISOLA) held at the University of Venda in South Africa from June 28 to July 1, 2012. Merolla’s (2014:85) article reviews the conference output as an efficacious re-engagement with “orality, new- media, and the Postcolonial experience” that reflects the changing oral genres and their conceptual reframing within the context of global digital technology. Merolla holds that the conference’s themes revolved around the interplay between the age old “African paradoxes” engulfing the orality/literacy dichotomy and “the new focus on the interconnectedness of … African verbal genres and modalities of production” (ibid: 82) leading to divergent interpretations. Thus the controversy of ‘eroded orality’ in the face of ‘literacy’ become more confounded in view of the “innovative oramedia trends - of innovation in African oral genres and oral communication through literacy and new media,” (ibid: 82). Consequently, scholarly interest is increasingly shifting attention to the “changes in style and content of songs and narratives … production due to the introduction of literacy, radio and television,” (ibid: 82). Within the oral/literacy continuum, technauriture evolved as a nascent critical re-engagement with new forms of orality in writing, the multi-media and the internet. It has, thus, become a quest for rediscovering ‘eroded orality’ or cultural loss linked to the diffusion of technologies.
We can note that in the ‘eroded orality’ trend, African oral cultural heritage - now a model for artistic creation and social functioning - replaces the ‘positive’ and ‘critical’ faculties of literacy (Merolla, 2014:84).
It is within this dawning intellectualism that Kaschula (2004) and latter in partnership with Mostert (2009; 2011) designated the concept of technauriture to investigate the digitalisation,
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commercialisation and technologisation of African literature in their study of Xhosa oral poetry. Since then adherents of “technauriture” have adopted it as an approach which:
…integrates technology, auriture (the aural aspects of producing and receiving oral literature), and literature. Technauriture is proposed as a paradigm for engaging with the interplay of orality, the written word, and technology, and its contextualization “within a post-modern milieu that has … historically undervalued the spoken word,” as well as for maintaining the central role of orality in discourses on technological media (Kaschula and Mostert 5). Another positive aspect is that “technauriture” - as term and paradigm - offers the opportunity to bridge the arguments pivoting on loss and innovation in previous debates, (Merolla, 2014:85)
The proliferation of online short stories, poems, songs and other oral narrative productions within the contemporary dispensation of the “innovative oramedia trend,” (Ibid: 83) is on record. The short story writers publish both in print and online. Technauriture, therefore, appropriates a common ground for the study of cybernetic literary publications on the same slide as their printed counterpart. Thus Zimbabwean short stories anthologised in print, (such as Chirere (2007), Chihota and Muponde (2000), Zimbabwe Women Writers’ publications and AmaBook’s collection of short stories, can be analysed in juxtaposition with online short stories or internet publications using this model.
Mostert (2010:12) considers technauriture as a referential paradigm necessary for interrogating the “pressing issues surrounding indigenous knowledge systems and orality.” He perceives the cumulative knowledge and experience of human societies as continually embodied in orality. In spite of whatever inroads modern technology might have made, Mostert places great store of value on the oral tradition as a vehicle of social cohesion.
What technauriture allows is the creation of a coherent paradigm for researchers to assess the potential for harnessing technology to reverse the demise of oral traditions and the knowledge systems embodied in such traditional contexts. Effectively to offer a home for orality and oral traditions within the complex technological environment that is becoming characteristic of all modern human societies, (ibid: 12).
Thus technauriture’s great store of value on orality represents the kernel of the dialectic that the present research seeks to capture by studying the short story. Chinyowa (2001:13) advances th argument that the undying oral presence is consolidated around the migration of the medium of transmission into a digital environment, “in a manner that does not result in similar loss of essence as that which has been associated with the limitations of reducing orally based systems to written form.”
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Technauriture permits the on-going to examine the potential impact of the technology on the oral artefacts such as the short story. Following Kaschula and Mostert’s application of the theoretical model to Xhosa poetry the present research quizzes whether or not oral performance are fundamentally altered in their re-production through technology. Along with Mostert, the current research catalogues a series of questions:
How does audience participation inform the performance? How does the knowledge manifest orally and in situ migrate to other contexts? These open up further questions regarding the social construction of reality: “Media processes are part of the material world, yet we must also capture the force of the mystifications that media generate or, less pejoratively, their contribution to the social construction of reality,” (Mostert, 2010:13).
The application of technauriture as an analytical paradigm requires an analysis of the migration of contexts from the primordial oral through the written medium to the current electronic or multi-media form. The essence is to determine whether the medium of delivery does not become an end in itself or a means to an end. As Kaschula and Mostert (2011) clinch, new technological developments present all practitioners with an opportunity to reverse the alienation the written word has caused to many oral cultures. However, Mostert (2010:15) warns that in order to reverse this alienation, “it is incumbent on the researchers to engage in a rigorous exploration of what knowledge is, how knowledge is valued, and how it can be mobilised effectively.”
This study, therefore, espouses technauriture as a theoretical model that bridges the gap for negotiating written and cybernetic literatures. The choice for the short story genre amplifies a case of canonically neglected oral genres whose resilience lies in their mutation within the cyber space. While the medium of transmission has changed, from the primordial oral discourse passing through the written phase to the ultimate electronic multimedia form, the short story form remained intact. Thus technauriture draws the analysis of the short story genre to the same conclusion as Afrocentric scholarship that genres of African cultural origination do not change. Both analytical models trace oral performative discourses to the African cultural roots, to the centre or the axis mundi. Despite their deviations and/or eccentricities, Afrocentricity and technauriture complement each other to draw this exegesis to a conclusion that the short story is a stand-alone genre independent of the conventions of the novel.
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