[Xmca-l] Re: Hope and Despair as a "blues Hope In Morten Nissen's Ethical Prototype

[HENRY SHONERD]

Happy Valentines To All,

Larry, Annalisa, Huw, Helena especially have heartened me. 

Let me start by thanking Helena for a copy of her book, What Did You Learn at Work Today: The Forbidden Lessons of Labot Education. I am reading it slow and easy and like it a lot. I like Helena’s cloze procedure with “hope" (from Mattingly and Bloch via Larry)  and “project" (from Andy), filling in the third space so to speak. Very ZPD, with leading formations. 

I have a new construal of prototype now, thanks to Larry’s proffers of “real” metaphor and “concrete universal”, with this possibility (got to work on it, get grounded on it): thinking with prototypes taps into the fractal nature of mind. Resonances at different scales of mind and matter are entanglements at these different scales. Embodied and rhythmic. That resonance is the hopeful response to despair. In THAT third space. We’re minding the gap, gang. 

I was just wondering how many of you out there are into Valentine’s Day? And shout out to Annalisa for plugging away at Chaiklin on ZPD, great article, David Kellogg turned me on to Chaiklin, so shout out to David Ke. 

And yes, to you, Annalisa, am totally interested in Stainton, based on the Losonsky article, but I need more time to read Losonsky. So slow and easy. Otherwise I’ll just be faking it. Ha! Here we’re into Nissen. The political is personal. Yikes!

I really like Larry’s reference to Manjali:

'Franson suggests to understand the philosophy of modern language theory is
to understand the development of language studies as the companion of
empire as the construction of a "system of rule".
THIS history of language traces how the emergence of "linguistic science"
was a facet of the emergence of nation states. Three examples are offered.
1] the creation of "standards" [unified fields of exchange] below Latin and
above the vernaculars.
2] providing a new fixity to language which helped to build the "image" of
antiquity so central to the idea of "nation".
3] the creation of new "languages" and disciplines of "power”.’

This resonates for me with the idea of L2 learning as culture shock, a first language/culture already being in place and in time. Disrythmic. And it seems to me that first language/culture development seems to have its share of such perturbations. I am interested in the place of repair in development in general, but especially in second language. 

And, Huw, I would be interested in a few more words from you on  “basic resources” and “constructivist” when you are talking about Chomsky’s April 4 (2014) interview with Google. You’d be a real pal.

This has been a long Valentines Day message. I see that Larry just posted. Nice. All about hope. I wonder if I’m a hybrid melancholic and bipolar:

 :((  /  :))   <———That’s me on my mobius strip.

Henry



     

> On Feb 14, 2015, at 11:58 AM, Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com <mailto:helenaworthen@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> Larry, I noticed this too. 
> 
> Try substituting "hope" for "mission", "goal", "purpose" ,"object", etc in Activity theory, as in, the system is defined by its purpose. 
> 
> Try "The system is defined by its hope."  The meanings overlap enough to spring Activity theory free of its rather mechanical and technological aura. 
> 
> Andy uses "project" to give us another pespective on acitivity systems, so-called, and now Nissen proposes "hope." 
> 
> Good enough for me.
> 
> H
> 
> Helena Worthen
> helenaworthen@gmail.com <mailto:helenaworthen@gmail.com>
> 
> On Feb 14, 2015, at 10:36 AM, Larry Purss wrote:
> 
>> For those engaged with Morten Nissen's collective project I would like to
>> invite a close reading the concluding section [pages A36 to A39] in his
>> article "Meeting Youth in Movement" [I have reattached for ease of access]
>> 
>> Morten frames his "approach" as an approach of "hope". He writes,
>> 
>> "what I am doing here, then, is articulating the hope, the possibility, the
>> deeply historical emergent narrative, still very much unfinished - and
>> perhaps temporarily halted - of a trans-pedagological tinkering of
>> collectives, as part of an expanding and responsive welfare state. ....
>> makes this a 'blues hope' in Cheryl Mattingly's sense of the term (2010)
>> the kind of hope that remains close to its dialectical counterpart despair
>> [LP and dread].  It shares with certain religious utopia a counterintuitive
>> radicalism that calls forth doubt.  But contrary to religious versions of
>> blues hope, this is written as inherently contestable, in the way that it
>> still claims to present a real possibility, a concrete utopia in Bloch's
>> sense."
>> 
>> I would add that some prototypical versions with an ethics based in a
>> religious ground could also include a hope that is inherently contestable
>> open possibility that "could be". The term "religious" has multiple
>> meanings and sense and some protypes enact concrete utopia in Bloch's sense.
>> 
>> I also want to bring in Morten's understanding of "met-phor". On page A38
>> that a version such as Morten's brings in a spatial or geographical
>> instantiation. He says,
>> 
>> "Although 'movement' and 'neutral ground' like Vygotsky's 'zone of proximal
>>> development' [and many other theoretical constructs], addresses space
>>> metaphorically, it is at the same time quite *corporeal. [LP-
>>> incorporated, embodied, incarnated]*. "
>> 
>> 
>> The section following elaborates on Morten's notion of "spaces"  Morten
>> makes a case that how our understanding can become prototypical [as
>> concrete universals] is through the development of "models" [prototypes
>> carry models and possibly metaphors or figural worlds]  Models AS methods.
>> The concluding section of this article is titled "Theory: as Prototypical
>> Narrative" Theory enacting hope and despair, hope and dread, and
>> collectives [third spaces] being/becoming embodied places of meaning and
>> relevance *AS ETHICAL AND POLITICAL places of empowerment*.
>> Morten's concluding comment references Derrida as projecting hope endlessly
>> postponed as the "places" of collective enactments, the places of "could
>> be", and "yet to come" within a transformational participatory stance.
>> 
>> I continue to search for ways to expand the understanding of "metaphor"
>> beyond "mere" meataphor to indicate that metaphor is deeply "real" enacting
>> and embodying collectives.  In other words "real" metaphor contrasted with
>> "ornamental" metaphor which embellishes the literal.
>> 
>> Larry
>> <FEBRUARY 10 2015 NISSEN MORTEN Meeting Youth in Movement.pdf>
> 
>