[Xmca-l] Re: Notes on Blindness

[Greg Thompson]

Larry,
(if you'll allow me this reduction of your post)

Brilliant expansion!

-greg

On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 12:47 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> Greg,
> Memory as requiring the process of reduction of the manifold of experience
> does seem to an interesting question which may offer a possibility for
> further expansion. I mean this metaphorically as a reciprocal "dance" of
> reduction and expansion.
>
> The "reciprocal" awareness that possibly not only memories but also our
> theories and our conceptions may be relying too much on the processes of
> memory [after the fact] and therefore loosing sight of the multi-modality
> of experience as it unfolds.
> Greg as you point "out" - to be seen is to be made (cf. Bakhtin's notion
> of "consummation").
> Your insight where you say that filling the whole of the audible
> environment is an experience of beauty, which has something to do with the
> complexity of the image  in  motion, alive, moving, unfixed, with shades
> and textures constantly
> changing.
> Instead of being isolated, cut off, preoccupied, internally, you are
> presented with a world. You are related to a world. You are addressed by a
> world.
> Robert Nichols in exploring the meaning of freedom and recognition  says,
> "To stand in a 'free' relation to the world, to oneself and one's ethical
> commitments, is to know that one's standpoint does not exhaust the total
> range of meaningful, viable, and worthwhile possibilities."  For Robert
> beauty as 'being-in-the-world' depends on the "extent" to which we actually
> "embody" the world through receptivity, fragility, indeterminacy, and
> interconnectivity. [similar sentiments to the notion of "surrender" or
> "acceptance" as an ethical commitment]
> Robert Nichols perceives an ethical commitment that emerges within an
> awareness of how one cares for the world and how one has an "attachment" to
> existence.
>
> Greg, is it possible that memory, and theory "about" how one re-members and
> re-cognizes and re-presents and re-duces and then articulates the world as
> the "truth"  contributes to being isolated, cut off, preoccupied.  The
> world foreclosed.
>
> Requiring that "we" once again  turn [or re-turn] to being within the world
> as situated presence. The musical resonance of "attunement" within the
> world prior to re-collecting and re-ducing the world through memory which
> highlights the salient features.
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 8:20 PM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Annalisa,
> > Yes, you said it very well, much better than I did in my prior post which
> > was a bit intellectually garbled (and I missed the article that went
> along
> > with it, so thanks for pointing that out!).
> >
> > But I do think that there is an interesting point to be made about the
> > importance of the reduction of the manifold of experience that is
> essential
> > to memory.
> >
> > I once assembled a paper that argued that forgetting should be seen as a
> > tool of ethnography since when one reduces one's experience to what is
> > remembered, one has gotten to something that was somehow important.
> > Reviewers thought it was just an excuse for doing lazy ethnographic
> > research. Perhaps it was...
> >
> > What ever happened to that paper?
> >
> > I can't remember...
> > -greg
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 3:00 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Greg!
> > >
> > > Yes the piece is really great and well produced!
> > >
> > > If you read the article that accompanies the video on the Times page,
> the
> > > writers indicate that over time as he adjusted to blindness, he came to
> > > revel in the other senses to the point that when he was helping with
> the
> > > movie, he'd forgotten that he'd gone through that painful time, and
> > > apparently wasn't happy to revisit the memories. I think that is the
> > point
> > > of the last scene with the rain (inside), to show that he began to
> "see"
> > > differently, with sound. Maybe? At least, that is how I interpreted it.
> > >
> > > I also thought, as you, it was remarkable that he remembered
> photographs,
> > > maybe these map in memory differently? Like you say because of
> reduction
> > of
> > > modality?
> > >
> > > What also seems significant is that if we don't use those organs of
> > > perceptions we lose memories of those perceptions. Which may mean that
> > > memory is something that must be reconstructed with the organ somehow,
> > even
> > > if we aren't using the organ to perceive externally while retrieval of
> > the
> > > memory? I'm not sure I explained that very well…
> > >
> > > Kind regards,
> > >
> > > Annalisa
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> > Assistant Professor
> > Department of Anthropology
> > 880 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
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson