[Xmca-l] Re: Ventriloquation re-ducks

Larry Purss lpscholar2@gmail.com
Fri Dec 20 18:27:52 PST 2013


Andy,
Yes, I am reflecting on the way these narratives and concepts are *hinged*
[pivoting] around the search for *certainty* . It seems that there have
been multiple genres that create narratives exploring the *development* of
this relationship. For example one genre describes the transition FROM
mythos [narrative] to logos [conceptual,] AS IF the narrative mode is less
*real*.  Then there are responses to this particular bias in alternative
narratives
Andy, I do not have the expansive background to know exactly when mythos
shifted to narrative and logos shifted to conceptual. However what is
fascinating is to *read* about these multiple transitions throughout our
*traditions* and the ways these themes pivot around both narrative and the
conceptual forever twisting and turning and being *retrieved* in new
imaginal reflections

This theme of searching for *certainty* [systems] and the tendency towards
*closure* and the countervailing impulse to *extensions* and expansions and
what is referred to as the *abyss* beyond all foundations [the groundless
ground] .

I am aware that the way I have just posed this theme has also been
*explained* using a narrative mode as a particular *interpretation*.
I'm also aware that this narrative has not come out of nowhere. It is
composed within a tradition that continually returns to this pivot.

larry


On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 3:23 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> I presume Larry is alluding to "mythos" in the Aristotlean sense which we
> nowadays call "narrative" and "logos" in the sense we now call
> "conceptual". So I took Larry's comment as related to connections between
> the narrative and conceptual knowledge, which can make claim to be moving
> to the concrete in the same sense that ideographic relates to nomothetic
> science. Is that the same as Aritotlean vs Galilean? I'm not sure.
>
> Did I get that right, Larry?
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.mira.net/~andy/
>
>
>
> mike cole wrote:
>
>> Hi Larry-- Shifting relations between logos and mythos is rising to the
>> concrete for you!? Far out!!
>>
>>
>> For me a concrete case would be the way that adults seek to get kids to
>> take on more logos by embedding
>> "logistic" moments in computer games that are organized around myths that
>> enable kids to make sense of the
>> logocentric tradition as means for dealing with (always partially mythic!)
>> world. Teaching everyone to how to open zones of care seems like a really
>> interesting way to think about development..... until the orcs appear.
>>
>> Come ot think of it, a computer game of hobbits and orcs that taught the
>> calculus as a side product would make a great xmas present for the
>> learning
>> sciences!
>> :-)
>> mike
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 11:42 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Mike,
>>> Moving to the concrete, recently I have been tracing the shifting
>>> relations of the contrasting genres of muthos [myth] and
>>> logos [rationality] and the polyphonic ways these genres have played out
>>> as
>>> particular understandings. However, what is fascinating is the way these
>>> genres interweave throughout different epochs and either muthos or logos
>>> can be in the ascending position.
>>> To give one example, Hayden White explores the shifting understandings of
>>> the relation of *the social* with *the cultural* as differing ways of
>>> orienting to logos. Hayden wrote;
>>>
>>> "In many respects both Marxist and Western academic social science
>>> regarded a pre - or unscientific human consciousness as the principal
>>> cause
>>> of the problems that a genuinely scientific study of society and its
>>> processes would ultimately solve. Much like the Freud of *Civilization
>>> and
>>> its Discontents*, Marxist and Western academic social science agreed
>>> that a
>>> *civilization* undomesticated and undisciplined by scientific knowledge
>>> of
>>> human nature, society, and culture was the cause of the peculiar
>>> *discontents* of a specifically *modern* society. From this ASSUMPTION
>>> arose the desire informing both of these social sciences to *reduce*
>>> culture to the status of an epiphenomenon of processes - specifically
>>> social processes - which because they were intrinsically grounded in
>>> humanity's relations with the material world and inherently utilitarian
>>> or
>>> aim-oriented in their motivation, could be construed AS RATIONAL.in their
>>> articulation and therefore submissible to the ministrations of
>>> scientifically DERIVED twchniques of manipulation, education, and
>>> disciplination in a way that culture, conceived as *play*, *values*,
>>> *superstition*, *art*, *religion* and the like, was not." [in "Beyond the
>>> Cultural Turn", 1999,  where Hayden White wrote the afterword to this
>>> edited text]
>>>
>>> This is one fragment, and he goes on to also articulate the shift towards
>>> the mythic voice in the ascendence. The multivoiced theme is left
>>> ambiguous
>>> and there is always *excess* beyond either muthos or logos. It is the
>>> *ambiguity* and *ambivalence* that seems central.
>>>
>>> Mike, as I *read* Hayden above, I experience a type of ventriloquation of
>>> the interweaving of muthos and logos though historical epochs.  In the
>>> above quote, Hayden is expressing a genre which expresses logos in the
>>> ascendence and muthos is in a supporting role.
>>> However, logos does not have the last word and other voices enter and
>>> exit center stage. As I *read* narratives which trace the emergence of
>>> different *genres* [concepts] it seems that the concept of *venting* may
>>> be
>>> appropriate as a way of expressing the interweaving voices across the
>>> ages
>>> that we hear in our current reflections. The multivoiced expressions of
>>> our
>>> internal and external *talk* seems to reverberate across multiple time
>>> scales. However in each *turn* also is a *return* and this also can be
>>> traced through human *development.
>>>
>>> Larry
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 10:23 AM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Larry--  The etymological research was Eugene, not me. Sorry if my
>>>> summarizing was inaccurate on who said what.
>>>>
>>>> I assume there are a great many varieties and modes of ventriloquation
>>>> that can be characterized the various terms you propose. In every case
>>>> under consideration its clearly important to identify the communication
>>>> in
>>>> such terms to be relevant...... gotta rise to the concrete, and in doing
>>>> so, to fill out the concept in as much detail as the conclusions you
>>>> want
>>>> to reach seem to require.
>>>>  mike
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 4:08 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com
>>>> >wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Thanks, Mike.
>>>>>
>>>>> The exploration of voice *as* ventrilocation projected within
>>>>> puppets circulating around persons and personas in character are using
>>>>> metaphors of the stage and theater. [all life is a stage]
>>>>>
>>>>> I wonder more about the notion of  the types of genres AND tropes
>>>>> within
>>>>> which the persona and masks are actually expressed.
>>>>> I hear more the question of *voicedness* and *multivoicided* expressed
>>>>> within multiple *traditions* [genres, tropes] and it is not merely our
>>>>> personal voices being generated, but the actual *traditions* speaking
>>>>> through us given voices which
>>>>> , are *returning to the conversation. I wonder how often it is NOT the
>>>>> puppets ventriloquating as it is our  anscestors speaking?
>>>>> The question *who* is doing the speaking is a deeply complex question.
>>>>> Yes our voices can speak as *intra* voices, they can speak as inner and
>>>>> outer voices, they can speak as outer voices but returning to the
>>>>> discussion of play and playworlds, our are voices also expressed within
>>>>> *worlds* emerging in our conversations.
>>>>>
>>>>> I would like to introduce a notion of*generous* readers and *generous
>>>>> listeners* who in their interactions with interlocutors are also
>>>>> participating with ancestors [and traditions, genres, tropes].
>>>>> Generous and
>>>>> generativity as reading that OPENS ZONES OR CLEARINGS of *care*.
>>>>>
>>>>> I have been using the *concept* ventriloquation to express the truth
>>>>> that we are all *crows* who steal each others egg words and fill them
>>>>> with
>>>>> our own *meanings* and *sense*[David K's metaphor].
>>>>> As Mike showed in the etymology of the word *ventriloquation* there are
>>>>> many crows.  However these egg words when transformed [translated] are
>>>>> also
>>>>> expressing particular *traditions* within which the newly filled egg
>>>>> word
>>>>> makes sense.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ventriloquintation as an egg word is not making puppets or masks speak.
>>>>> I wonder if it is more constitutive a process that develop how *I*
>>>>> speak.
>>>>> This notion of 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person *voice* as
>>>>> constituting new forms of *character formation [and new forms of
>>>>> socioability.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'll pause
>>>>> Larry
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>


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