[Xmca-l] Re: how to broaden/enliven the xmca discussion

[Larry Purss]

How to broaden and enliven the chat?

Bringing Tim to the discussion and the theme of *active* and *passive*
orienting as SENS.

Here is an attached article from a Merleau-Pony angle on moving in the
world - contrasting with the
more cognitive inferential approach.

At least juxtaposing active and passive as notions will engender reflection
on activity, acts, and operations [unconscious or conscious?]

[PS Peirce suggests  simultaneously BOTH  "perceptual AND inferential
*processeS* through abductive ways of moving.

I sense Tim Ingold playing within these play grounds

On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 7:23 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> Andy , David
>
> The Purves article on writing as *activity* *acts* and *operations* is
> translating what I read is another language game of *process* and
> *composing processeS* that refer to *conscious* and *unconscious* processes
> that emerge or recede into the unconscious.
>
> THIS particular act of *translation* [from process language TO activity
> language] and asking us to become *dis-embedded* from the terms *process*
> and *unconscious* and shift to a language of *activity* as meaning
> processeS  and *operations* in relation to *acts* as coming in and out of
> conscious awareness seems like an example of the use of *activity* and
> *acts* and *operations* as gesturing at the same phenomena [knowledge,
> awareness, focussing, coming into and out of *being as begings] as other
> language games [pragmatism, phenomenology, etc] as observing and commenting
> on these *processes/activities*.
>
> I *read* [and translated] the terms of activity theory [as presented in
> this particular article] as gesturing towards the phenomena of moving and
> dwelling and preferring one particular language game over another.
>
> I couldn't help *hearing* this article as an invitation to *dwell* or
> *occupy* THIS way of performing as activities, acts, and operations [which
> come in and out of *focus* or *attention* or *attunement*.
>
> The metaphor of psycho -dramatics and being invited *on stage* to perform
> THIS ACT with these ACTORS.
>
> My question is if this particular language game is more *instrumental*
> than other alternatives and as instrumental is *preferable*? [a question of
> *ought*]
>
> Should this particular language game with the terms *activity* acts* and
> *operations* BE LIMITED to *behaviour* or is the language game more
> EXPANSIVE and going BEYOND behaviour to play in the realm of *the*
> unconscious and conscious moving into and out of awareness.
>
> I also am *reading* Peirce's *secondness* [as inhibition of SELF-control]
> and letting phenomena BE PRESENT as compelling and THERE prior to thirdness
> [general, symbolic as within nature as present and showing up when
> SELF-control is inhibited]
>
> Larry
>
> On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 12:49 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
>> So David, when you read Chapter 5 of Thinking and Speech, what do you
>> call those combinations of sign-mediated actions which Vygotsky describes
>> with words such as "complex" or "pseudoconcept" or "heap"?
>> Andy
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *Andy Blunden*
>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>
>>
>> David Kellogg wrote:
>>
>>> This morning I had the great pleasure of waking up in my own bed and
>>> listening to Yo-yo Ma, Emanuel Ax and Itzhak Perlman playing this:
>>>
>>>  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRkWCOTImOQ
>>>
>>> It's the D Major Cello sonata number two by Mendelssohn, played, as
>>> Yo-yo Ma tells us, on the Davydov (no, that THAT Davydov) Stradivarius
>>> that was probably used to perform the sonata for the very first time
>>> in front of Mendelssohn himself. Now, throughout this concert, Ma has
>>> been something of a stickler for "the original", and Perelman has been
>>> pulling politely but pointedly towards a more personal interpretation.
>>>
>>> So at around 6:45 on the clip, Perelman tells Ma that if Mendelssohn
>>> himself had heard the sonata played on that very cello, then he,
>>> Perelman, was sitting in the very seat that Mendelssohn had occupied,
>>> and that therefore his freer interpretation was really closer to
>>> Mendelssohn than any attempt to recreate the sonata with period
>>> instruments. Mercifully, at this point, Ax interupts them and starts
>>> to play.
>>>
>>> Back in Sydney, Seth Chaiklin and I found ourselves in a somewhat
>>> similar argument, with Seth in Perelman's chair, and me clinging
>>> rather obstinately to a paleo-Vygotskyan interpretation which actually
>>> rejects "activity" as a unit of analysis for anything but behavior,
>>> and most certainly as a unit of psychological analysis. Seth's
>>> argument was pragmatist: for certain practical applications, we need
>>> new interpretations, including revisionist ones. Mine was an argument
>>> in favor of species diversity: when the revisionist account supplants
>>> the original to such a degree that Vygotsky's original argument is no
>>> longer accessible to people, we need to go back to original texts (and
>>> this is why it is so important to make the original texts at least
>>> recoverable--once they are gone, it is really a whole species of
>>> thinking that has become extinct).
>>>
>>> David Kellogg
>>> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>>>
>>> PS: Andy, what shocked me about Bonnie Nardi's plenum in Sydney was
>>> not her use of "society" or "object": actually, I think I would have
>>> liked it better if she had used those terms a little more imprecisely,
>>> in their folk meanings. In fact, a little more IMPRECISION might have
>>> made it even clearer to us the sheer horror of what she was
>>> contemplating.
>>>
>>> For those on the list who missed it, the plenary focused on a world
>>> without jobs--that is, a world where five-day forty-hour jobs are
>>> replaced by "micro-work". Nardi admitted that this was a rather
>>> dystopian state of affairs--but she also showed us what she called the
>>> "bright side": more leisure, less greenhouse gases, and also human
>>> identities less narrowly tied to work. As one person in the conference
>>> pointed out, and Nardi confirmed, it would also mean more time for the
>>> spiritual side of life.
>>>
>>> What was not pointed out was the effect of all this on the "object" of
>>> "society", using both terms in their folk senses. The working class is
>>> being ground down into the economic position of short term sex workers
>>> and atomized into the social position of housewives. Inequality is now
>>> at levels not seen since 1820. Even a cursory study of history tells
>>> us that the result of this is not going to be individual spirituality
>>> but rather more violence. The only "bright side" I can see is if that
>>> force is organized, social, and directed against social equality
>>> rather than against fellow members of the working class.
>>>
>>> dk
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
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