[Xmca-l] INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE

[Larry Purss]

Mike,
Thanks for the suggestion to invite john to respond. I am including him
using an address different from the one you used.

John,
 Here is Mike's response which included you in the address:

Hi Larry-- I still have not read John's paper. But at least dealing with
email I could not answer owing to local consequences of getting some of the
rain
we asked for.

Firstly, here we have a clear case where John should be asked to join the
discussion. He is a long-admired colleague with whom we have far too little
interaction, speaking personally.

So, here is a part of answering. Perhaps off topic. I hope not. I believe
that the principle of the retrospective construction of meaning is a
foundational part of the problem under discussion and fictive stories about
how cognition and emotion are a dance between the frontal lobe and the
limbic system. In so far as emotion is effected AT ALL by experience, it is
retrospective, and hence, constructive. the "tools" of that construction
are, in the aggregate, human culture.

Cultural cognition is always, in principle, non-linear -- a sequences of
vicious circles and spirals of development.

As a routine practice, I used to spend a lot of time with undergraduates at
a local housing project. There the students engaged in a variety of
mutually valued practices -- a hybrid idioculture-- and learned through
empathy. It was all about growing ourselves by participating in the
development of others.

Finding socio-cultural-historical niches where such settings can be
sustained is quite a different matter. I am particularly interested in how
fragile and pre- occupying they are.o you and myself:


Mike,

Yes, I understand John indicating that an ASPECT of performative practices
[always emotive] is the *mode* of retrospective constructions. I understand
THIS mode as captured by John using the concept *text*  Mike you in quotes
mention THIS mode as using *tools* of that retrospective construction.  I
believe John is using the concept *tools* in a more limited sense as
existing as *relata* [in relation to *prosthetics*]  When
performative practices use *prosthetics* our experience is EXTENDED but AS
prosthetics the use is transparent and our performances are expressed
THROUGH the use of the prosthetics from the subjective side of performative
practices. However, when the use of the prosthetics is disrupted in use
THEN we become aware [conscious] that we are using prosthetics and in this
awareness the prosthetics BECOME opaque [and become conscious AS *tools*.

If I have read John as he intended then *texts* *prosthetics* and *tools*
are various ASPECTS [not parts] of a dynamic FLUID *intra*-action which is
always AMBIGUOUS and moving within our performative practices. In other
words AS retrospective constructions we are foregrounding the *text aspect*
within the *prosthetic-tool-text* ambiguity.

In other words the multiple *aspects* of our orienting [wayfinding] to our
surroundings express fluidly flowing *modes* of awareness which cannot be
pre-determined  AS pre-existing subjective and objective aspects of
performative practices.  The differentiation into prosthetics, tools, and
texts come into existence WITHIN our practices. [NOT prior to which is an
*inter*-action picture] The radical phenomena John is asking us to focus on
is the *felt tendency* PRIOR TO differentiating this fluid *intra*-action
AS INVOLVING *prosthetics*, tools*, or *texts*. THIS fluidity is always in
fact *ambiguous* and cannot ever be finalized.

Mike, I hope John will add his voice to my *reading* and elaborate on the
*text* aspect which is so prominent in Gadamer's project of philosophical
hermeneutics. John is exploring *wayfinding* within our *intra*-actions
 and discusses *prosthetics* *tools* and *texts* AS moments within our WAYS
of orienting.  ALWAYS fluid, flowing dynamic phenomena,  ALWAYS
ambiguous, ALWAYS partially open, and involving multiple *aspects*
including prosthetics, tools, and texts.

John, if I have mis-read your intent I ask others to read your
article. This article is participating in [and extending using text] a
tradition which also includes James, Dewey, Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty, Gibson,
Wittgenstein, and Karen Barard.  XMCA incarnates this *spirit* and I hope
we generate further participation within this textual tradition.

Larry