[Xmca-l] Re: Perezhivanie and Organic

[Edward Wall]

David

     Yes, that was the difference I was noting. Vygotsky in the passages I was reading seems to using ‘organic’ as denoting something ‘natural,' while Stanislavsky seemed to using it s somewhat more holistic fashion.

Ed

> On Feb 2, 2017, at  3:01 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> The Russian word that Vygotsky uses for "organic" is the same as the word
> we use, and I assume that the same thing is true of the word that
> Stanislavsky used. It is "organic" transliterated into Cyrillic, rather
> than translated into Russian.
> 
> What really makes this problem new-thread-worthy is that the meaning of the
> word "organic" at the end of the nineteenth century is not the same as the
> word meaning that we use in several important ways.
> 
> Take, for example, the crudest possible way: semantic prosody, or the "good
> vibes" of some words (e.g. "organic food") vs. the "bad vibes" of others
> (e.g. "artificial flavor"). The nineteenth century began with a romantic
> movement towards nature and towards holism ("Gestaltism"), against dogmatic
> rationalism and atomism. So "organicism" had a semantic prosody that
> involved not only naturalism (which it still does) but also a form of
> proto-structuralism. Organic structure involved a complex whole with parts
> that are interdependent like organs and not independent like ball bearings.
> 
> Today, this semantic prosody falls on deaf ears. If anything, it's the
> other way around: we know all about cells, and we know that they are
> independant and dispensible in large numbers (you slough off millions every
> day). But mechanical parts are precisely engineered to fit each other, and
> for the want of one, the whole machine comes to a grinding halt.
> 
> Nevertheless, we can still see this older meaning of organicism in
> Toennies' distinction between Gemeinschaft (community, mechanical
> solidarity) and Gesellschaft (society,organic solidarity) and also in the
> work of Bernsetin (workers have a mechanical solidarity based on likeness
> while middle class people have organic solidarity based on mutual
> instrumentality).
> 
> (Of course, there's the same problem. Even working class families have an
> organic solidarity, while it is sometimes hard to believe that white collar
> office workers sitting at computers in cubicles are anything bt
> mechanical....)
> 
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
> 
> On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 4:20 AM, Edward Wall <ewall@umich.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Stanislavisk seems to consider what is termed ‘organic’ in his taking up
>> of perezhivanie. Vygotsky also uses the term ‘organic,’ although as near as
>> I can tell, without regard to perezhivanie. However, what seems to be being
>> called ‘organic’ is very different (or so it seems) in these two cases. Is
>> the Rusiian different?
>> 
>> Ed Wall
>> 
>>> On Feb 2, 2017, at  11:15 AM, lpscholar2@gmail.com wrote:
>>> 
>>> Beth and Monica explore the phenomena occurring in playworlds generating
>> perezhivanie.
>>> 
>>> Playworlds are performance worlds and these worlds may be exploring the
>> relation of ‘unity’ and ‘difference’.
>>> 
>>> Another term that may have relevance when Beth and Monica refer to
>> negating the negation is the operation of ‘apophasis’.
>>> William Frank (On What Cannot Be Said) describes the apophatic :
>>> 
>>> *In apophasis, which empties language of all positive content, absolute
>> difference cannot be distinguished from absolute unity, even though the
>> respective discourses of difference and unity nominally stand at the
>> antipodes. BOTH configurations, unity and difference, are exposed as
>> relatively arbitrary and, in the end, equally inadequate schemas for
>> articulating what cannot be said. (Franke)
>>> 
>>> Claire Chambers in her book (Performance Studies and Negative
>> Epistemology) comments on the above Franke citation :
>>> 
>>> *If unity and difference cannot be distinguished from one another (we
>> cannot KNOW what makes them distinct), then it is impossible to determine
>> what either ‘is’ – meaning that knowing and being, epistemology and
>> ontology, are also impossible to distinguish from one another.(Claire
>> Chambers Chapter 1)
>>> 
>>> I am not sure how far to go with this theme of : Negating the negation?
>>> I hear this theme in playworlds.
>>> 
>>> If this seems relevant, i can post the first chapter of Claire Chambers
>> book. I will just mention that Vygotsky’s Judaic childhood and adolescence
>> would have encountered this apophatic ‘tradition’.
>>> Enough for one probe or possible pivot?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>>