The Tyranny Of Written Knowledge

🍏your Sunday read 4th May, 2025

A well-researched original piece to get you thinking.

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Hi Scholar,

This Sunday’s essay, titled The Tyranny of Written Knowledge, might not be an easy one to digest. The argument we make - about the pulverising effects that knowledge communicated through written media has had on both knowledge itself and our relationship to it - might not sit well with you at first. We appreciate that. Especially given that we are making this argument through writing - yes, we are well aware of the irony. As writers ourselves, it has been hard for us to come to terms with too: we value writing deeply.

But in our reading, thinking, and most importantly, in talking to each other, we came to a critique of writing that helped us recognise just how deeply the primacy of the written form has shaped our knowledge-making activities. Drawing on Harold Innis’ theory of the material biases of communication media, we’ve sought to show how writing’s dominance - particularly in its modern, industrialised form - has reshaped what counts as knowledge, and how it circulates. And in classic Scholarly Letter fashion, this is not a critique that destroys or subtracts. It is one that adds. Drawing on African philosophy, we offer a counter-weight - a balancing force - to the tyranny of written knowledge.

The Tyranny of Written Knowledge

Written by The Critic and The Tatler

Allow us to start with a short story about a fictional character who is learning the ropes of the research laboratory: The Tatler. 

Arriving at the building which houses the lab, The Tatler is greeted by Postdoc, an individual not much older than himself, who invites him into the laboratory.

Once inside, The Tatler finds himself in a room filled with the equipment necessary to fulfill the laboratory’s purpose of producing knowledge. Immediately to his left is a rack where several white lab coats are hanging on hooks. Small machines (ranging from the size of a microwave to a calculator) and bottles of various chemicals populate the workspace throughout the lab. Larger equipment lines the walls: fridges and freezers; a box-like structure made of stainless steel and glass; large gas cylinders.

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