Porcelain Publishing / CT / Volume 9 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.47297/wspctWSP2515-470208.20250902
ARTICLE

An Archaeology of the Pre-Modern Subject: Orality, Body, and Media  Practices——A Cross-Cultural Investigation of Myth, Performance, and  Memory

Qian Xie1
© Invalid date by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Abstract

The medial transition of the oral age in human history was not merely a matter of technical succession; it profoundly  reconfigured the generative logic of the artistic subject. This paper seeks to interrogate the historical morphology of the "premodern subject" within the oral tradition, framed against the backdrop of this medial shift. The study reveals that in a primordial  phase wherein subject and object had not yet been differentiated, the body functioned as a "meta-medium"—unifying memory, performance, and transmission—thereby constituting the practical foundation of artistic activity. The resultant form of  subjectivity is concretely manifested in the multiple roles of the rhapsode or bard: as a vessel of divine inspiration, their body is a  conduit for spiritual afflatus; as a master of memory, their performance relies on formulaic phrases drawn from a collective "pool  of tradition"; and as a performer, their practice of co-presence with the audience collaboratively weaves a highly situated and  participatory cultural field. Ultimately, the oral tradition engendered a "corporeal subjectivity" radically distinct from the modern  concept of the author—a subjectivity that is primordial and unindividuated, unifying transmission and reception, and deeply  embedded in the interactive nexus of the body and the community. An archaeology of this subject-type not only offers a  historical lens for deconstructing the myth of the modern subject but also establishes a crucial historical benchmark for  understanding the transformations of subjectivity throughout subsequent media revolutions.

Keywords
pre-modern subject
oral tradition
the body as medium
media archaeology
Homeric epics
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Critical Theory, Electronic ISSN: 2753-5193 Print ISSN: 2515-4702, Published by Porcelain Publishing