[Xmca-l] Re: Foucault

[Tom Richardson]

Hi Phillip
Thank you so much for this-beyond-the-call-of-courtesy-even reply. It
testifies to the continued, belligerent existence of a *human* longing, not
merely to understand learning-and-development-in-society, but to change it!
Best wishes
Tom
Middlesbrough UK

On 19 September 2014 22:17, White, Phillip <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>
wrote:

> Tom, what you write about xmca being so fascinating is, i think, an
> accurate reflection of its initial vision.  Eve Ekeblad of Gothenburg,
> Sweden, has a small web site on xmca's history:
>
> XLCHC came into being in 1984 as a medium for discussion of research on
> learning and development with a general concern for issues of education in
> modern technological societies and a special concern about the ways in
> which educational systems are a source of socially engendered social
> inequality. The "call letters" of this discussion group (to borrow
> terminology from another medium) indicate its initial goals. LCHC is the
> Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, a research unit founded at the
> Rockefeller University in the early 1970's which moved to the University of
> California, San Diego in 1978. Until 1984, LCHC had an ethnically diverse
> faculty that conducted an active post-doctoral program in the use of
> comparative methods for studying culture and cognition with special
> interest in problems of learning and development in school and non-school
> settings. By 1984, two years into the Reagan-Bush era, we had lost
> virtually all of our minority group faculty, our research concerns were
> explicitly rejected by federal funding agencies, and we were denied
> post-doctoral funds on the grounds that there was insufficient minority
> group faculty. :-)
> XLCHC was one response to this non-benign neglect. The "X" in the title
> had a dual significance: First, it was meant to provide a medium for
> continued interaction and cooperation by the many visitors and
> post-doctoral fellows with whom we had interacted in the past, that is, for
> "ex-LCHCers." Second, it was meant to provide a broadened constituency for
> discussion of the issues traditionally associated with the Laboratory by
> including scholars and graduate students from around the world who wished
> to participate.
>
> i don't know if this description has been superseded or not.
>
> i began to participate on this list in the early 1990's, and it can still
> be a painful crawl.
>
> phillip
>
>
> ____________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of Tom Richardson [tom.richardson3@googlemail.com]
> Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 10:52 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Foucault
>
> Where's the 'Like' button?, Phillip -  so many of the threads on xmca are
> fascinating, although I canoften only crwl paiinfully through the specific
> 'jargon'/register/vocabulary of any particular discipline / area
>
> Tom (an intermittent interloper)
>
> On 17 September 2014 02:53, White, Phillip <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > as you write, Martin, yes, they had similar descriptions of their work
> >
> > "Foucault came to describe his work overall as a "historical ontology of
> > ourselves." Certainly both Sartre and Merleau-Ponty were philosophers on
> > ontology, and of history."
> >
> > the difference is, i believe, that Foucault identified with those peoples
> > who have been marginalized: prisoners, those deemed mentally ill, and
> > homosexuals.  he said that his writings were autobiography.  and i've
> come
> > to understand my own work as a way of autobiography.  i've begun to think
> > of theory as a way of autobiography.
> >
> > i believe that i recognize a great deal of autobiography performed here
> on
> > xmca - just as one sees autobiography performed at a cocktail party.
> > (that's a great metaphor!)
> >
> > p
> >
> >
>