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Pettitt next moved to discuss the actual characteristics of the parenthesis. The primary impact on the mediated context of content during the parenthetical period is containment. Look at a printed work, Pettitt suggested, and you will see strict regimentation. Words are forced into lines, surrounded by margins, placed on pages that are sewn into a binding, contained by a jacket and placed on a shelf where they can be contained and controlled. The words have been “imprisoned” and have lost much of their pre-parenthetical fluidity. This confinement of cultural production has obviously not been limited to the written work: plays move to stages and music to concert halls during the parenthesis.
Pettitt sees a similar containment in the realm of cultural production. This is demonstrated by the rise of the individual work and the assumption that a work will have a beginning, middle and end. That a work will be a complete thing and will not be merely fragments; and that once it is complete it will become isolated and static – moving through time with little if any change.
Before and after the parenthesis, change and interference of communication are normal. The final containtment – one of cognition according to Pettitt – concerns how we view the world and organize information. During the parenthesis the world was viewed in terms of categories. People were viewed by race and gender. Taxonomies were created to organize things. Everything was contained and described and put into its appropriate category. That wasn’t always the case.
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