[Xmca-l] Re: Spinoza on xmca

[Greg Thompson]

One reason I mention him is because of resonances with ideas.
But I also mention him as a kind of trickster figure as well as a student
of the trickster in writing (his dissertation was on Rabelais).
I also mention him as a writer who seems authentically engaged with
meaningful/emotive aspects of human existence (e.g., Toward a Philosophy of
the Act, and Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity).
And finally, I mention Bakhtin because I'm still not convinced that the
deep treasures of Bakhtin's work has yet been mined out.
-greg




On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 8:13 PM, Henry G. Shonerd III <hshonerd@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Greg,
> Thank you for you good words and great question. I knew about Bakhtin, but
> have been finding him everywhere in the articles and chat of XMCA over the
> last week. Seriously.
> Henry
>
> On Sep 13, 2014, at 2:26 PM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I would hope that a certain amount of irreverence would be dear to most
> > people on this list!
> > But seriously Henry, have you come across Bakhtin's work at all?
> > Seems like another that you might want to throw in with the crowd of
> > healthy irreverents.
> > -greg
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Sep 6, 2014 at 2:48 PM, Henry G. Shonerd III <hshonerd@gmail.com
> >
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Mike and David,
> >> This is seriously getting to be a club that I, like Groucho,  won't
> join,
> >> if it takes me as a member. I think all of this seriously evokes Andy's
> >> contention, in his notes for the upcoming presentation at the ISCAR
> >> conference (which XMCA has gotten) that, "Adults can grasp true
> concepts,
> >> and can change society, and a social theory has to treat adults as
> adults,
> >> and this is what the projects approach allows us to do. " If "adult"
> means
> >> the same as "serious", you can see why I have my doubts about joining
> the
> >> Unserious Scholar Club. On the other hand, if I can have some fun, as in
> >> the laughing warrior (forget gender stereotypes here, and dare me to
> talk
> >> about Jihad), then that's what I'm talking about. Incidentally, I loved
> >> Andy's notes. I could so relate it to CG. The emergent character of
> project
> >> realization he talks about applies very well to discourse, as you can
> see
> >> in the articles by Langacker I have sent out. Discourse IS a project and
> >> its outcome is typically not entirely clear in the minds of the
> >> interactants as they negotiate its waters. XMCA, of which this email is
> a
> >> "turn",  is a prototypical "work in progress", as Andy puts it, since we
> >> clearly don't know where this will all end up. But I hope it can be fun
> >> along the way.
> >> Henry
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Sep 6, 2014, at 1:51 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hi Henry-- There goes my pile of books that need to be read before bed
> >> time!
> >>> Spinoza goes up there right next to Dead Souls.
> >>>
> >>> However, David having already claimed the mantle of unserious scholar,
> >> and
> >>> you having made the same claim, I am afraid that I have to make
> precisely
> >>> the same claim on the unrefutable grounds that no one pays me any
> longer
> >>> for what I do so I get to be as unserious as i can seriously be!
> >>> mike
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Sat, Sep 6, 2014 at 12:33 PM, Henry G. Shonerd III <
> >> hshonerd@gmail.com>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Hi Mike,
> >>>> All I can say now is that Spinoza is famously quoted as having said,
> >> "The
> >>>> more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you
> >> become
> >>>> a lover of what is." This quote happens to appear in the introduction
> >> to a
> >>>> very popular self help book, Loving What Is, by Byron Katie (2002). I
> >>>> bought the book , obviously, because I thought I needed help. It did,
> >> but
> >>>> it also introduced me to Spinoza. And that has been a deeper "help".
> So,
> >>>> from a personal perspective, I can totally understand how Spinoza and
> >>>> periizhvanie would be connected. For all of you ESL teachers out
> there,
> >> who
> >>>> doesn't remember Krashen on the "affective filter" and I have been
> >> seeing a
> >>>> lot on character and education lately. Oh yes, and how failing is
> >> important
> >>>> to eventual success. Teasing out issues in the education of
> >>>> non-mainstreamers, and recognizing how the current system is toxic for
> >>>> everyone, I think Spinoza's analysis and the narrative of his life are
> >>>> powerful. Vygotsky hits me the same way. Cantor, the mathematician,
> and
> >>>> Pierce, the philosopher/logician/semiotician, also constantly come up
> >> for
> >>>> me. They were ridiculed by the received cognoscenti of the time, so
> >> much so
> >>>> that the suffered mental breakdowns. But they pushed on to develop
> >> tools in
> >>>> math and semiotics that seem to me are complementary with Vygotsky.
> >> Again I
> >>>> get to take the role of unserious scholar here, so think of my
> thoughts
> >> as
> >>>> gaming on line and don't take the game too seriously.
> >>>> Henry
> >>>>
> >>>> On Sep 5, 2014, at 6:42 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Hi David and Henry--
> >>>>>
> >>>>> David-- I was intrigued by your comment that Spinoza is a
> controversial
> >>>>> topic on xmca. I googled Spinoza on the main web page and came up
> with
> >> 4K
> >>>>> plus hits (!!). My own impression is that few on this list, me
> >> included,
> >>>>> have engaged in serious study of Spinoza let alone the imprint of
> >> Spinoza
> >>>>> on Vygotsky.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> What is the nature of the controversy? What is at stake? The topic is
> >> of
> >>>>> particular interest to me at present because I have been part of
> >>>>> discussions with people who are focused on Vygotsky's use of
> >> perezhivanie
> >>>>> in his later work, where the relation of emotion and cognition is a
> >>>> central
> >>>>> concern and Spinoza is clearly relevant.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Henry and anyone interested in chasing down what has been written
> about
> >>>>> various topics in xmca chatter, take advantage of the nice google
> >> search
> >>>> at
> >>>>> lchc.ucsd.edu.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> mike
> >>>>>
> >>>>> (who enmeshed in the sense/meaning distinction in all of its
> >> multilingual
> >>>>> confusifications at present)
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> > Assistant Professor
> > Department of Anthropology
> > 882 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> > Brigham Young University
> > Provo, UT 84602
> > http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>
>
>


-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
882 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson