[Xmca-l] Re: Fw: Re: The world of freedom AND historical Ontology

[HENRY SHONERD]

Larry,
Would it be fair to say that the following astract from one of the four articles Mike recently had us vote on describes an example of finding that third space?:

The Rise and Fall of the U.S.-Dakota War Hanging Monument: Mediating Old-Settler Identity Through Two Expansive Cycles of Social Change

Author: Rick Lybeck
This article compares outcomes of two activity systems formed to memorialize the mass hanging of 38 Dakota men during the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Operating in 1911-1912, the first system failed to address tensions between its old-settler subject and progressive values taking shape in the community, especially regarding capital punishment. Informed by the first system's nonexpansive outcome and by native activism expressed during the Vietnam War era, the second system incorporated multiple community voices, resulting in an expansive commemorative outcome that continues today. Special attention is paid to the identity work one monument performed in both eras, mediating old-settler ideology through a violent local chronotope. 

The narrative of this dialog of contested narratives is hopeful, though, not having read the article, I sense blue hope. I probably got the term wrong, but you know what I mean. I hope.

Henry




I like mapping scenes in one context to analogous scenes in another. It’s line with fractal coherence.
> On Feb 28, 2015, at 11:09 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Haydi,
> Yes, I also sense a convergence between my jargon which is a hybrid mixing
> up of traditions traditions and what you have expressed as ways of acting
> in the world.
> I gave a rather long preamble because the notion of "freedom" seems central
> to where we are heading potentially.  I wanted to situate the two dominant
> notions of freedom [negative freedom AS autonomy] and [positive freedom as
> expression of authentic self] as contrasted with the third alternative
> [freedom as situated].
> 
> Then I introduced what seems central for "situated freedom" is "spaces" or
> "places" and showed how Heidegger's language of "fields" and "clearings"
> are ways of describing this key concept of "metaphorically" imagined
> spaces/places which have the possibility or potential to "come into form".
> The ethical indicates the way or approach of orienting towards these not
> yet but could be places  as places of "situated freedom".  It is in the act
> of bringing "to life" [to actuality] these "living forms" that the subject
> attains "freedom".  Freedom is immanent within the crystallized and
> sedimented forms as normative [Gadamer's prejudices or prejudgements] which
> each of us "brings" to our conversations [spoken and written].  However,
> though our prejudices is where we begin,  [the always already existing] it
> is through expanding our "horizons" within the already given and the
> application of this expanded awareness through bringing into form potential
> could be places/spaces that freedom emerges within these emerging third
> spaces.
> 
> If this commentary is read as "jargon" or "wordy"I am trying to understand
> the relation of Vygotskian concepts  as emerging situated concepts [living
> thoughts] which were emerging in a historically situated time at the
> opening of the 20th century and how these notions
> of being-in-the-world were "conditioned" by multiple streams of thought
> [crystalized, normative, and open-ended] which influenced the way scholars
> asked and answered questions at that time and are now the
> current "conditions" [as living words] for getting our bearings as we ask
> new questions about how we "ought" to proceed AND what types or kinds of
> spaces/places to create in which to be free. [and become certain "kinds" of
> persons.
> This way of questioning our "subject matter" is ALWAYS an ethical question
> and returns us to our shared living world and how we are to "act" with
> "ethical guidance" and with others in our expanding "horizons" of
> possibility [the could be]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 8:06 AM, Haydi Zulfei <haydizulfei@rocketmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Sorry ! ... metamorphosed into an insect ... a la Koffka's "Metamorphasis"
>> !
>> 
>>  ----- Forwarded Message -----
>> *From:* Haydi Zulfei <haydizulfei@rocketmail.com>
>> *To:* "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> *Sent:* Saturday, 28 February 2015, 14:43:50
>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: The world of freedom AND historical Ontology
>> 
>> Larry,
>> Truly speaking , I see nothing in the piece to disagree with . Just it's a
>> matter of "jargon" which complicates a take for concepts as I read in
>> Vygotsky's works .
>> I fear being warned if I take it paragraph by paragraph .
>> 
>> I can take your being in the world and your "historical ontology" as man
>> wishing to live enthusiastically with hope and conscious behaviour and
>> perseverance in removing obstacles in the way . Francine also clarified the
>> difference between the two types of conscious behaviour. I became very
>> happy when Francine exposed her view on Vygotsky .
>> 
>> By "ideals" , I didn't mean the highly desired ; I meant the reflection of
>> the real world onto the mind ; here it's a matter of drives and motives to
>> life . Ethics come from social norms and what if alienation becomes the
>> social indispensable norm .
>> 
>> By "situated freedom" , I take it not something given , innate . But
>> something you should fight for . I wouldn't like being in the world as
>> Sartre and Camus liked to be . You ARE and you want to remain the so-called
>> independent individual you have been and you're to be . What befalls the
>> "stranger" , the "Outsider" is catastrophic . What might come from a human
>> being who's been metamorphosed into an instinct because of social pressures
>> , disasters , calamities , ...  . What might come from a decrepit mutilated
>> outcast who has to talk to his own shadow in solitude as our Hedaayat
>> narrates in his "The Blind Owl" .
>> 
>> "Stylized Mode of Being" comes to my rescue , however .
>> 
>> 1. Thinking and Speech and the formation of concepts , the crowning of the
>> word .2. True ! Man's wrestling with Nature , with the entities in the
>> world through what comes out of dialogues and negotiations .3. We have a
>> saying "The action-free knowledgeable man is a tree unyielding" . The true
>> scholar finds the core problem in social life , resolves contradictions if
>> any , builds up the personality according to the personal sense he gets
>> from the society via hereditary temperaments . I cannot think of ethics as
>> something additive or detached . Teach me the genetics of ethics , please .
>> 
>> A good friend of ours , knowledgeable as he is , told me now it's not a
>> matter of the beginnings . It's a matter of whether we are in the middle or
>> the end . He is quite right . Now what is due is reciprocity , interaction
>> and if you please , dialectics between the two . Each enriches the other ,
>> no linear movement .
>> 
>> The finishing paragraphs give me clue to what I could take from what you
>> wrote purposefully . Larry ! You write so much and so long and I have
>> always tried to understand you ; now more comfortable with your script .
>> Thank you so much !
>> Best Wishes
>>      From: Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> Sent: Friday, 27 February 2015, 21:55:20
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] The world of freedom AND historical Ontology
>> 
>> Haydi and Francine have continued the conversation on the understanding of
>> functions and the origin in actions and activity.
>> Haydi commented,
>> 
>> Man now had to take one very big step further , farther . To have ideals ,
>> to let them penetrate cycles of activities to provide products to satisfy
>> needs because the richest , ripest talk will not satisfy life needs .
>> 
>> I want to introduce a book by Robert Nichols titled "The World of Freedom:
>> Heidegger, Foucault and the Politics of Historical Ontology". [2014] I got
>> this book from Kindle for around $10. I bought it because of his clear
>> statement on shifting to "ethical questions" [to have ideals that PENETRATE
>> cycles of activities].
>> 
>> Robert is making a case that freedom can be "thought" through notions of
>> "ontology" and "situated freedom" This way of formulating "freedom"
>> critiques notions of freedom as understood in terms of "a property OF the
>> individual subject. Robert is making the case that freedom is a "mode of
>> being-in-the-world". He states that as a mode this "kind" of reciprocal
>> interrelationship [as Simmel understands reciprocal] AND "stylized mode" of
>> being.
>> 
>> This being-in-the-world seeks to "disclose" the mutual interrelatedness of
>> 3 aspects of being.
>> 1] the acquisition of knowledge
>> 2] the appearance of a domain of entities about which knowledge claims can
>> be made
>> and most centrally
>> 3] the "ethical transformation" of the "subject" [matter] of knowledge.
>> [see Gadamer for a notion of subject matter as such]
>> 
>> Robert's book is an attempt to disclose this 3 part reciprocal
>> interrelatedness through a "working out" of the possibilities and potential
>> "projected" [ideally] within the worldly activities "of" disclosure. THIS
>> activity "makes" a horizon of intelligibility possible and thus [as subject
>> matter] the "field" or "clearing" ON WHICH self-recognition and
>> self-formation take "place"
>> 
>> To "be free" is NOT to detach oneself from this [subject matter] this
>> "field" or "clearing" THROUGH an act of cognitive reflection. Robert
>> Nichols is making a claim that the reciprocal interrelation of freedom and
>> historical ontology does not disclose the subject matter by an act of
>> "cognitive reflection" but to "be free" is to be in a "mode" of relation TO
>> the "field" or "clearing". This means to "cultivate" a certain *ethical
>> attitude of awareness WITHIN the activities of disclosure that constitute
>> the ontological ground of the field or clearing ITSELF" *
>> 
>> In other words, this ethical "style" or "mode" IS to "take care" of the
>> "field or clearing" and through the care of this field one takes care of
>> the "self"
>> 
>> Haydi mentioned action and activity as primary. Robert's approach to these
>> questions of "situated freedom" as occurring as activity and action "of
>> disclosure" within "fields or clearings".  I will circle back to the
>> centrality of the imaginal in imagining these fields and clearings as
>> coming into formation that enact fundamental "ethical styles or stances or
>> positions"
>> 
>> This is a kind of "third space" which honours activity that is
>> fundamentally ethical enactments existing by "being-in-the-world"
>> 
>> Robert Nichols, by bringing Heidegger and Foucault into conversation,
>> believes he can offer clarity the activity of disclosing the interrelation
>> of freedom and historical ontology as "acts of care" of the "field or
>> clearing" which nurtures or cultivates this "subject matter" as such.
>> 
>> I chose this book as I try to get clarity on the multiple notions of "third
>> spaces" that require ethical stances or styles or modes to bring into
>> potential being the ideal forms that have the "power" to change the
>> pre-reflective crystliized sedimented formations we are born into.This is a
>> "genre" within the theme of "situated freedom" brought into awareness
>> through the reciprocal interrelation of having Heidegger and Foucault in
>> conversation with Robert Nichols [as an act of disclosure]
>> 
>> Larry
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>