[Xmca-l] Re: Notes on Blindness

Fri Jan 23 14:57:59 PST 2015

Mike and all,
I found this quote from Voloshinov (1926) in T.V. AKHUTINA
The Theory of Verbal Communication in the Works of M.M. Bakhtin and L.S. Vygotsky (2003, p. 102): 
"Intonation establishes the close connection between the word and the extralinguistic context. Living intonation is virtually able to release the word from its verbal limits. . . . Intonation is always at the boundary of the verbal and the nonverbal, the spoken and the unspoken. Intonation is oriented in two directions: toward the listener... and toward the object of the utterance as if to a third living participant."

I wonder what Bakhtin had to say about non-verbal gesture which accompanies speech, which could not be seen by a blind person. Does one sense become heightened when another is compromised? Does language provide redundancy to help the listener?

Henry

> On Jan 23, 2015, at 2:02 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> 
> All seems relevant to the imagination thread to me!
> mike
> 
> On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 12:36 PM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> 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
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science as an object
> that creates history. Ernst Boesch.