[Xmca-l] Re: The manologue

[Vera John-Steiner]

Dear friends and colleagues,

There comes a time in life when one becomes more of a reader/listener than contributor. I have reached that stage. XMCA is an important part of my life, I look forward to the various threads and discussions. But there is something about the speed of the exchanges that makes me hesitant to contribute. It is also connected to the point that Helena raised. This is such a challenging year politically, so worrisome, that it is hard to focus on topics that ignore this common reality we share. Can we try to understand what is happening with the large following of  a bigot like Trump with our CHAT tools?

The topic of manologue is of interest to me. In 1999, I published a chapter in a book (edited by S. Chaiklin et al.) devoted to Sociocultural and Feminist Theory, In it I point out some  shared assumptions between cultural-historical and feminist positions and the lack of attention paid to the latter in our CHAT writings. This is still the case. In the chapter I also comment on women's accounts of collaboration which are fuller than men's in describing the "complex dynamics of co-construction,competition, intellectual ownership, gender socialization,   and joint authorship with daunting honesty." Currently, there are  few women writing messages on this list, when they do, like Annalisa and Helena, they do touch on some of these issues.
      
Perhaps if we try to share more about ourselves, as David K. often does, we may get some of the lurking women to participate.

Vera
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Helena Worthen
Sent: Friday, April 22, 2016 2:19 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The manologue

Hello, dear people -

As someone who joined XMCA at least 20 years ago — it was assigned to a class at UC Berkeley, taught by Glynda Hull, who was way ahead of most of us in understanding how important electronic (digital, we call it now) communication was going to be - I may be able to add something about how things are different or changed. 

Eva Ekblad was a wonderful, active participant on XMCA, also intentionally and publicly feminist. At one point she and many of the other women broke off and had our own discussion list. It broke down in 1998 or 99, under the weight of a debate about what Marx said or didn’t say. There’s lots to say about her but I wouldn’t want to say it without getting in touch with her.

Here’s what I see as having changed the most on XMCA: the politics is gone. We used to get bulletins from the field from people in our world-wide community. Often, it was people outside the US looking at the US; sometimes it was people talking - often cautiously — about their own worlds. This was very important to me. It still is. I have benefited and am deeply grateful to people from all over the world for not only their contributions to the steady surface discussion but for their private answers to my questions or comments on something I’ve said. I have had the good fortune to meet some of these people, too, and hope to meet more. I really want to go to Iran and meet Haydi, for example!

But it amazes me that right now, in the middle of this crucial election, the only shout-out I’ve heard was from Andy Blunden. Nobody else is paying attention? When we were in Viet Nam, everyone we talked with was asking, “Where did this guy Trump come from? What is wrong with America?” and when we said we were supporting Bernie, they would clap. Did you notice what the percentages were for the overseas primary vote? It was something like 70-30 for Bernie. People looking at America, and remembering what we’ve done in the last 20 years, get that something important is happening now. But no one’s speaking up on the xmca list. What’s the problem?

thanks to Annalisa for bringing up the one-sided gendered character of XMCA these days. I suggest that the loss of grounding our worldwide community in the political realities of the worlds we live and work in is one of the things that you lose when the conversation narrows.

How come there was no discussion, for example, of Yrjo’s petition against the slicing away of lecturers at the U of Helsinki? Here’s Finland, with the best educational system in the world, and they’re cutting 900 lecturers?  Why no reaction to that? I’m sure that people teaching at other universities have something to say about this. What’s the background? What are people doing? What does Yrjo say about it? How about the other people from his Institute — what do they have to say? 

Any thoughts?

Salutations and abrazos all around — Helena Worthen
Vietnam blog at helenaworthen.wordpress.com

> On Apr 22, 2016, at 12:31 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> 
> Thanks Annalisa for bringing back
> ​I​
> he issue of XMCA as manilogue.
> It brought back memory of Eva Ekblad, who gave up on academia and was a
> weaver last I heard, and news of Phillip's memory of humping elephants.  It
> is all in the archives. 30 years of tangled threads of discourse, data for
> the picking.
> 
> ​Those interested in Eva's discussion, and other views of MCA at different
> times in its history, can find the relevant material at ​
> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/archives
> 
> I am not so sure discussing the communicative behaviors of fellow members
> is a hot idea given the ways such discussions tend to reduce to
> identifiable individuals whose behavior is subjected to moral evaluation.
> ​In any event at the sole continuously active participant except for Bruce
> Jones (is that true?)
> male, white, and elderly I am disabled in such a discussion. No efforts of
> mine have been sufficient in this regard. As a first responder, I take
> comfort in the fact that the worst Phillip can remember is an "almost
> flaming" event. I hope we can keep it that way. If people can figure out to
> make this discussion more inclusive, there is no "one" stopping you. It
> would certainly be a welcome outcome.
> 
> I note in closing how many women have joined any of this discussion.​
> 
> ​mike​
> 
> 
> On Thursday, April 21, 2016, White, Phillip <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>
> wrote:
> 
>> Annalisa, this is a topic that has circled around several times here on
>> xmca - and i'm pleased to see it appear again.
>> 
>> i've been a member of xmca for perhaps just over twenty years  -  and the
>> first time that i remember the topic appeared was when a woman participant
>> on the list described the men's activity of participation as, if i remember
>> correctly, bull elephants mounting each other.
>> 
>> that provoked a huge uproar, close to flaming one another.
>> 
>> and Eva Ekeblad who lives in Sweden(i may have misspelled her last name)
>> and a fellow from Boston did an analysis of female and male participation
>> on xmca, and, again, if i remember correctly, pointed out that men wrote by
>> far the most postings, as well as the longest and most immediate
>> responses.  so that men dominated the list-serve with the swiftest, longest
>> postings, along with the greatest number.  and it seemed to that the men
>> who wrote the most postings also wrote more to each other, ignoring the
>> more peripheral  participants.
>> 
>> i have my own ideas regarding why a few men regularly dominate xmca
>> through multiple, long postings.
>> 
>> i don't know if the list serve is up to analyzing our own behaviour.  or
>> even if the topic is actually worth analysing.
>> 
>> phillip
>>