Page - 37 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/01

Writing, Affordances, and Governable Subjects | 37www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/1, 33–44 pression, word choice, or order are more fluid, varying in each performative event. By fixing and stabilizing ideas and knowledge, writing also preserves them in a certain form. Once given that form, words and ideas can endure, tran- scending time and place.12 Thousands of clay tablets from ancient Mesopota- mia have been discovered in recent decades. The ideas and knowledge they contain is now available to others in very different times and places. The knowledge they contain, in its original form, remains available to others. This is not to say, however, that what was written is something that was stand- ardized and normalized. These processes are part of another affordance of writing. Standardizing and Normalizing Something can be written down and then revised, erased, destroyed, or oth- erwise discarded. It can be lost. What is required for writing to become stan- dardized and normalized is social use. It must become part of social practice. Circulating texts between and among persons and communities is one prac- tice whereby a text becomes standardized. The same text is shared, read, or performed, and thereby conveys the same words, in the same form and vo- cabulary, beyond the context in which it was written. Copying a text, whether once or repeatedly, creates the original text as a standard. Storing a text and later retrieving it in order to read it is another practice by which that text becomes a standard. The type and variety of social practices by which a text is created as a standard are large, but reuse must occur. Writing something does not automatically mean what is written becomes standardized. Reuse is not a foregone conclusion for a text. It requires conscious action. Thus, standardi- zation is an affordance of writing, something offered by writing and texts but not required. It must be realized through practice. Normalization is closely related to standardization, but different. Perhaps it is best to think of these as two points on a spectrum of behavior. Standard- ization involves the use of a text as text. It is text-focused, as written artifact. Normalization involves how the behavior of individuals and groups is shaped by written texts. Its focus is conduct as shaped by a (standardized) text. The Decalogue (or Ten Commandments; Exod. 20; Deut. 5) is normative because it 12 So Sonnet 1997, 109, 146. See also Olson 1994, 135.