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06929_Field_TCUM T494.txt
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1996-04-10
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a tribal and oral community into some degree of visual, uniform
culture able to sustain a market system.
In Egypt the press is needed to effect nationalism, that
visual kind of unity that springs men out of local and tribal
patterns. Paradoxically, radio has come to the fore in Egypt as
the rejuvenator of the ancient tribes. The battery radio carried
on the camel gives to the Bedouin tribes a power and vitality
unknown before, so that to use the world “nationalism” for the
fury of oral agitation that the Arabs have felt by radio is to
conceal the situation from ourselves. Unity of the Arab-
speaking world can only come by the press. Nationalism was
unknown to the Western world until the Renaissance, when
Gutenberg made it possible to see the mother tongue in
uniform dress. Radio does nothing for this uniform visual unity
so necessary to nationalism. In order to restrict radio-listening