'negative testing'

"The use of the term ‘non-literate’ to describe cultures that are not based on literacy is an example of what Michel Certeau calls ‘negative testing,’ in which a condition of lack and perpetual deficiency (the “non” in non literate) is ascribed the object of research. No longer possessing autonomy (for it exists now only in relation to the criteria by which the dominant order defines itself), the Other culture is disempowered and is unhinged from its own principles of organisation…. A research gap ensues because what constitutes the literate is specific while the non-literate becomes vague (it can be anything that is not literate)."

Moe Meyer, 'Dance and the Politics of Orality'.

> the important thing, then, would be to discover and describe those 'principles of organisation' (we find such an attempt in the work of Walter Ong, for example) rather than simply compile an inventory of what 'literate' principles are lacking. Generalisations based on such 'negative testing' are often not so much false, then, as useless - like saying Essex is a non-zoroastrian society.

All the same, the moment of 'negative testing' must presumably be necessary to any investigation?