[Xmca-l] Re: Unreading Althusser

[Glassman, Michael]

The student couldn't do videos even though that was her original intent because of IRB problems (it is based on a PAR study using videos in a small Canadian town).  So she just developed a performance troupe.  I don't feel comfortable putting up her work without her permission but if anybody is interested I can give you some information off-line.

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces+mglassman=ehe.ohio-state.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+mglassman=ehe.ohio-state.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2015 12:10 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Unreading Althusser

​Hi Michael ---  Glad my earlier query concerning "video gallery"
facilities finally made sense.
Would it be possible to see your student's video? Is it on Youtube?
mike​

On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 7:11 AM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu>
wrote:

> Hi Annalise,
>
> I am not sure I understand your correlation between the video programs 
> and kitsch.  It seems to me Morten Nissen is critiquing the 
> establishment view of the videos on a number of levels, while still 
> trying to suggest that they are a better method than the more 
> individualistic, traditional therapies of motivational interviewing 
> and cognitive behavioral therapy.  I can really sympathize, having 
> spent a number of years on a research project comparing motivational 
> interviewing, CBT and treatment as usual (spoiler alert, neither of 
> the interventions have any real impact).  And yet that is all we do.
>
> U-turn suggests a new method, except at least it seems to me Nissen 
> fears it falling into similar traps.  One of the traps is treating the 
> video as an object that forces reconsideration of the user's - in this 
> case Birren - life structure leading to drug addiction - at least I 
> think that is what Nissen is saying.  That the video becomes something 
> controlled by the therapy community rather than integrated into the 
> larger life scheme of the user.  But I see this as a really complex 
> argument.  Yes, the way that Nissen describes this - as an advanced 
> form of video story telling with trained videographers it does easily 
> become an object rather than part of the processes of life.  Whose 
> video is it, the user's, the videographer's, the therapist's, the 
> social work community establishment.  But I think much of this has to 
> do with understanding the role of this type of video storytelling, 
> which is more about the community, what Nissen I think refers to as 
> the collective than the individual (I think this point is kind of made at the end of the article).
>
> But what if it could be a different type of video, made from start to 
> finish by Birren and other users.  Mike's earlier request for programs 
> where individuals can easily make videos makes much more sense.  A 
> student working on our research project did her dissertation within a 
> participatory action research format in which she organized the 
> homeless youth/users (the study was about addiction among homeless youth) into a performance truth.
> She also was looking to create the performance as an object that would 
> lead to reflection on the structure of their lives, but I think in a 
> much more grass roots, genuine way.
>
>
> Michael
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:
> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Annalisa Aguilar
> Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2015 2:42 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Unreading Althusser
>
> Hello esteemed xmcars,
>
> I have done a quick reading of Morten Nissen's chapter and I would 
> like to proffer that what he describes with the video production as a 
> form of therapy for the drug addict (as sponsored by state programs), 
> does resemble to me the very kind of interactions that happened to 
> create the Kitsch in Art and how it came to be that Kitsch is the 
> favorite art of dictators (see my previous post in this thread, in 
> particularly I suggest in this context the essay by Greenberg as well as the WSJ article).
>
> It is as if what is considered hopeful (helpful), what is considered 
> therapeutic(empowering), which is done to transcend the past and the 
> future by being in the present, all that is erased by collapsing what 
> is meaningful into a formula of the unique or of sentiment (in this 
> case, hope), a kind of Möbius strip of experience as possibility, 
> which ends up becoming meaningless. Is the glass half full or half empty?
>
> I'm being a more than a little intuitive here, knowing that I may not 
> be walking on terra firma, which may not be very smart as I risk the 
> concrete blocks of "dogma" crashing around my head: It is easy to 
> label the original as dogma if one has adopted the stance of kitsch, I am realizing.
>
> Despite that risk, I sense similar patterns to Nissen's paper and 
> notions of kitsch (and how kitsch is created), and while I'm unsure at 
> this point of time if this observation has merit, I offer it for 
> discussion with the best of intentions.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Annalisa
>
>


--
It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.