1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910786200603321

Autore

Ong Walter J.

Titolo

Fighting for Life : Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness / / Walter J. Ong

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca, N.Y. : , : Cornell University Press, , [2012]

©1981

ISBN

0-8014-6628-8

0-8014-6629-6

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (240 p.)

Disciplina

128

Soggetti

Human beings

Competition (Psychology)

Sex differences (Psychology)

Consciousness

Life

Sociobiology

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Preface -- Part One. Backgrounds -- 1. Contest and Other Adversatives -- Part Two. Patterns of Adversativeness -- 2. Contest and Sexual Identity -- 3. Separation and Self-Giving: Pietà and Quixote -- Part Three. Past. Present. and Future -- 4. Academic and Intellectual Arenas -- 5. Some Present Issues -- 6. Contest and Interiorization -- References -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

"Fighting for Life is a book about contest, the agonia of the Greek arena, and its roots in male life, especially academia. Ong describes this work as an 'excavation' which was prompted by his previous explorations of such areas as the characteristics of oral and literate cultures, Peter Ramus and his 16th-century intellectual milieu, and the early dominance and more recent decline of classical rhetoric in education. In Fighting for Life, he weaves the results of a year's study of agonistic structures running through the biological, social, and noetic worlds. Describing his text as an 'essay in noobiology,' the biological roots of human consciousness, Ong claims that 'contest has been a



major factor in organic evolution and it turns out to have been a major, and seemingly essential, factor in intellectual development.' . . . The work is a valuable synthesis of a wide body of research and theory."-Rhetoric Society Quarterly