[Xmca-l] Re: Fate of a Man

Andy Blunden ablunden@mira.net
Tue Jan 17 17:39:03 PST 2017 

Thank you Marc! It was the third "plane" which was my 
intention in providing "Fate of a Man" for discussion. You 
picked out what were for me also the main (but by no means 
the only) instances of perezhivanija in this movie.

It seems to me that Sokolov (the author) offers one 
perezhivanie in particular as the main theme of the movie. 
At the beginning of the movie, the man and boy walk up the 
path to the camera and at the end of the movie they walk off 
together again. So this is the central theme. As you say, 
when Sokolov's family has all been killed, even his talented 
war-hero son who was going to be a famous mathematician, his 
life has become meaningless. I really liked your reflections 
of Sokolov's reflections too. He sees the young orphan boy 
who, he discovers, has no family and doesn't even know what 
town he comes from, but is aimlessly living on pieces of 
rubbish. He sees that the two of them are in the same 
situation. So after some time mulling this over a they sit 
together in the truck, he lies to the boy and tells him that 
he is the boy's father, and they embrace. But the boy 
questions this and he reasserts his claim and the boy 
accepts this. The man is able to define a new meaning for 
his life; he has done this autonomously without the help of 
a therapist, but he still needs another, the boy, to embody 
that meaning. But he knows it is his own invention. The boy 
on the other hand has to be made to believe it is true; he 
is not sufficiently mature to manufacture this meaning 
himself, but as a child he can be guided by an adult. As you 
say, Marc, it is very significant when Sokolov tells us how 
he is now, again, worried about his own death. What if I 
died in my sleep? that would be a shock for my son!

For me, this reflection causes me to look back on the man's 
whole struggle during the war: in the first phase he does 
not differentiate between his life as a father and husband 
and his life as a Soviet citizen - war is his duty and he is 
confident, as is everyone else, of victory. His bravery in 
driving his truck to the front line under fire reflects the 
fact that he has never imagined his own death. Then he finds 
himself prostrate before 2 Nazi soldiers who we assume are 
going among the wounded shooting anyone who has survived. 
But surprisingly, he is allowed to live, but is to be used 
as a slave. Sokolov has been confronted by his own mortality 
for the first time and he chooses life, but accepts slavery 
(Sartre and Hegel both thematize this moment in their 
philosophy). In this second phase of Sokolov's life he is a 
survivor. Everything hinges on surviving and returning to 
his wife and family. As you point out, Marc, his later 
reflections on this are particularly poignant, when he 
discovers the futility of this hope. Eventually, the life of 
forced labour becomes unbearable. He cries out: "Why are we 
forced to dig 3 cubic metres when 1 cubic meter is enough 
for a grave!" Sokolov has accepted and embraced death after 
all. (Transition to the third phase.) To his German masters 
this is an unendurable act of defiance. As David points out, 
there are flaws in the scene which follows, but ... he 
confronts his own death defiantly, stares it in the eye, 
spits on it, and his life again gains meaning as a "brave 
Soviet soldier" unafraid of death even in such an impossible 
moment. Not only does he survive, but takes the Nazi Colonel 
prisoner and hands the war plans over to the Red Army. Now, 
when he is offered the chance to return to his wife as a war 
hero he declines and asks to be sent back to the front. His 
life has adopted this new meaning which casts his life as a 
father into the shade. He no longer fears death. But he is 
persuaded to take time off and learns of the death of his 
family. As Marc relates, the continued survival of his son, 
who is now also a war hero, provides continued meaning and 
integrates the two themes in his life. This takes work, as 
Marc points out, and he has the assistance of an older man, 
in achieving this redefinition of his life. But tragically, 
with the death of his son (and NB the end of the war, albeit 
in victory) his life is again without meaning. Fourth phase. 
He has survived, but has no purpose. By becoming a father 
again (Fifth phase), he regains the fear of death and 
meaning in his life. It is real work, and we witness this 
psychological turmoil as he copes with the idea that this 
scruffy orphan boy could be a son to him, and eventually he 
manages it.

The transition between each phase is a critical period 
during which Sokolov's personality is transformed. Note 
also, that there is a premonition of this perezhivanie in 
Sokolov's earlier life: his family is wiped out in the Civil 
War and the famine of 1922, then he meets his wife-to-be, 
also raised in an orphanage, and they together create a life 
and have 17 happy years before the Nazi invasion intrudes. 
So from the beginning of the movie we are introduced to the 
main theme.

These are the main moments in the movie, which caused me to 
select it for discussion rather than any other movie. Also, 
there is no doubt that in producing this movie in 1958 the 
Soviet government was engaged with its people, in a process 
of collective perezhivanie and by reflecting on the 
collective perezhivanie during the period of the war, before 
and after, they aim to assist the people in collectively 
assigning meaning to this terrible suffering and like the 
man and his "son" walking again into the future. As a 
propaganda movie, of course, it is open to much criticism, 
but that is hardly the point. I appreciate Marc's analysis 
in terms of the other concepts he has introduced. I wouldn't 
mind a recap on these. In terms of Vasilyuk's concepts, 
Sokolov's life-world is *simple and difficult*. The boy's 
life world is *simple and easy*.

Can we continue to discuss "Fate of a Man", while I open 
another movie for analysis? I think there are at least 10 
subscribers to this list who have published in learned 
journals on the topic of perezhivanie in childhood. Perhaps 
one of you would like to reflect on the boy's perezhivanija?

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making 

On 18/01/2017 5:14 AM, Marc Clarà wrote:
> Hi, all,
>
> and thank you, Andy, for sharing this amazing film, which I didn't know. I
> think it will be very useful to share and discuss our respective views on
> perezhivanie.
>
> In my view, the film could be analyzed in terms of perezhivanie in three
> different planes. First, we could consider the person who watches the film,
> and we could study how the meaning she forms for the film restructures her
> relationship with aspects of her real life -such as, for example, her own
> death or the death of a beloved one, etc. (perhaps this is a little bit
> like what Beth and Monica, or Veresov and Fleer, do with their study of
> playworlds?). In this plane, which would be perhaps the most naturalistic
> one, the film could be studied as an human-made cultural artifact which
> restuctures psychological functions; here, the meaning formed for the film
> by who watches it and uses it as mediator in her relation to her real life
> would be an m-perezhivanie.
>
> In a second plane, we could proceed as if the film was real life, and we
> could consider Sokolov telling his story to the man he meets by the river
> (a little bit like Carla telling her story to me). In this plane, Sokolov's
> narrative (i.e., what is showed to us as narrated flashback) could be
> considered as a cultural artifact that Sokolov uses to relate to all what
> happened to him. At this plane, the meaning of this narrative would be the
> m-perezhivanie that, in that moment, mediates the relationship between
> Sokolov and the war events he experienced years ago (but these events are
> still very present to him, so although relating to past events, there is
> here a Sokolov's activity [towards the past war events] which is in present
> -this echoes Christopher when, within our conversations, said: “Part of
> this might also be a question of what it means to describe and represent
> one's own perezhivanie figuratively/narratively (whether to others, or to
> oneself), as opposed to living that perezhivanie. Especially if the attempt
> to capture/represent one's own perezhivanie is, perhaps, also central to
> the living of it?”
>
> In a third plane, we could proceed as if Sokolov's narration was not a
> retrospective narration, but the on-time sequence of events with on-time
> Sokolov's explanation of these events (in the moments in which the narrator
> voice is assumed within the flashback). In this plane, there are several
> interesting perezhivanie phenomena. Clearly, there is a Sokolov's activity
> of experiencing-as-struggle, which initiates when he realizes that all his
> family, except one son, had been killed 2 years ago. At this moment, his
> life becomes meaningless; the meaning (m-perezhivanie) he uses to relate to
> all his life (including the past) at this moment is expressed in his
> conversation with his oncle: “it's got to be that this life of mine is
> nothing but a nightmare!”. In this moment, Sokolov's past in the prision
> camp becomes also meaningless: then, his link to life (the m-perezhivanie
> that made being alive meaningful to him) was meeting his family; but at
> that time his family was already dead, so when he discovers it, he realizes
> that this m-perezhivanie (the idea of meeting his family) was linking him
> to death, not to life, so all his efforts to surviving become meaningless:
> “Every night, when I was a prisioner, I talked with them. Now it turns out
> that for two years I was talking with the dead?”. In this conversation,
> however, his oncle offers him an alternative m-perezhivanie to relate to
> his life: he still has a son, so the m-perehivanie of meeting his family
> can still turns Sokolov's life meaningful: “you've got to go on living. You
> have to find Anatoly. When the war is over, your son will get married, you
> will live with them. You will take up your carpentry again, play with your
> grandkids”. It takes some time to Sokolov to enter into this
> m-perezhivanie, but he does it and his life becomes meaningful again: “and
> then, unexpectedly, I've got a gleam of sunlight”. But, then, Anatoly also
> dies. How to keep living? Here, Sokolov holds the m-perezhivanie that
> linked him to life until that moment, and therefore, he needs a son;
> pretending being the father of Vanya turns his life meaningful again.
>
> Another interesting thing, still at that level, is how Sokolov's relation
> with his own immediate death changes along the different occasions in which
> he faces it. I thing here there are examples of
> experiencing-as-contemplation -in my view, this is not
> experiencing-as-struggle because the situation of impossibility (the
> immediate death) is removed existentially (Sokolov's life is given back to
> him), so that there is not a permanent situation of impossibility which is
> initially meaningless and is turned into meaningful. In each occasion in
> which Sokolov is faced with his immediate death, the m-perezhivanie that
> mediates this relationship is different. When he is captured, his
> m-perezhivanie is expressed as: “here's my death coming after me”. When he
> is conducted to meet the nazi official, the m-perezhivanie is expressed as:
> “the end of your misery”, “to my death and my release of this torment, I
> will drink”. In the first, the death is running after Sokolov; in the
> second, it is Sokolov happily going to meet death. Later, at the end of the
> film, he faces his immediate death again, and the m-perezhivanie is
> expressed as: “I'm really worried that I might die in my sleep, and that
> would frighten my little son”.
>
> Well, just some thoughts after watching this wonderful film.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Marc.
>
> 2017-01-15 0:06 GMT+01:00 Christopher Schuck <schuckcschuck@gmail.com>:
>
>> Yes, definitely that article! And specifically, when I used "pivoting" I
>> couldn't help but think of Beth's earlier example about how a child will
>> use a stick as a pivot for a horse. Perhaps a somewhat different
>> application but related, no?
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 4:06 PM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Chris, all,
>>>
>>> your post is totally relevant to Beth's and Monica's article in the
>>> special issue. They write about film and perezhivanie (quoting Sobchack)
>>> the following:
>>>
>>> The reason that film allows us to glimpse the future is that there is a
>>> connection between filmic time and ‘real’ time: “The images of a film
>> exist
>>> in the world as a temporal flow, within finitude and situation. Indeed,
>> the
>>> fascination of the film is that it does not transcend our
>> lived-experience
>>> of temporality, but rather that it seems to partake of it, to share it”
>>> (1992, p. 60).
>>>
>>> And later
>>>
>>> "Specifically, the way that the flow of time becomes multidirectional is
>>> that “rehearsals make it necessary to think of the future in such a way
>> as
>>> to create a past” (1985, p. 39). As Schechner ex-plains: “In a very real
>>> way the future – the project coming into existence through the process of
>>> rehearsal – determines the past: what will be kept from earlier
>> rehearsals
>>> or from the “source ma-terials” (1985, p. 39)."
>>>
>>> Alfredo
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>>> on behalf of Christopher Schuck <schuckcschuck@gmail.com>
>>> Sent: 14 January 2017 21:43
>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Fate of a Man
>>>
>>> But that's both the limitation and strength of art or fictional narrative
>>> as opposed to real life, isn't it? That art focuses our attention and
>>> highlights certain features in a way that is idealized and artificially
>>> "designed" to convey something more clearly and purely (but less
>>> organically and authentically) than it would be conveyed in the course of
>>> living it, or observing someone else living it? One way to get around
>> this
>>> would be, as David says, to analyze the film in terms of clues as to the
>>> stages of emergence. But maybe another way to use the film would be to
>> view
>>> it not so much as a complete, self-sufficient "example" of perezhivanie,
>> as
>>> a *tool *for pivoting back and forth between the concept of perezhivanie
>> as
>>> imaginatively constructed (through fiction), and the concept of
>>> perezhivanie as imaginatively constructed (through our real living
>>> experience and observation of it). So, it would be the *pivoting* between
>>> these two manifestations of the concept (designed vs. evolved, as David
>> put
>>> it) that reveals new insights about perezhivanie, rather than
>> understanding
>>> the concept from the film per se.
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 3:08 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think there's a good reason why Andy started a new thread on this:
>>> he's a
>>>> very tidy thinker (quite unlike yours truly) and he knows that one
>> reason
>>>> why xmca threads are seldom cumulative is that they digress to related
>>>> problems without solving the immmediate ones.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, of course, a film allows us to consider an example of
>>> "perezhivanie",
>>>> but it is a designed perezhivanie rather than an evolved one; it
>> doesn't
>>>> explicitly display the various stages of emergence required for a
>> genetic
>>>> analysis, unless we analyze it not as a complete and finished work of
>> art
>>>> but instead for clues as to the stages of its creation (the way that,
>> for
>>>> example, "Quietly Flows the Don" was analyzed to determine its
>>>> authenticity).
>>>>
>>>> I remember that In the original short story, the schnapps drinking
>>>> scene seemed like pure sleight of hand: an artistically gratuitous
>>> example
>>>> of what eventually gave Soviet social realism such a bad name.
>>>>
>>>> David Kellogg
>>>> Macquarie University
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 10:04 PM, Carol Macdonald <
>> carolmacdon@gmail.com
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Fellow XMCa-ers
>>>>>
>>>>> I have watched it through now, thank you Andy, but right now only
>>>> empirical
>>>>> psychological categories come to mind.  I will watch it again and in
>>> the
>>>>> meanwhile let my fellows with more recent experience of
>> /perezhivanie/
>>>> take
>>>>> the discussion further.
>>>>>
>>>>> It is a kind of timeless story, and modern film techniques would
>>> perhaps
>>>> be
>>>>> more explicit. At the least I would say it has for me a Russian
>>>>> understanding of suffering, perhaps because of their unique
>> experience
>>> of
>>>>> it. But having said that, WWII must have generated other similar
>>>>> experiences, apart from the first part about Andrei's family dying in
>>> the
>>>>> famine.
>>>>>
>>>>> Carol
>>>>>
>>>>> On 14 January 2017 at 02:15, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I watched it in two parts with subtitles:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16w7fg_destiny-of-a-man-
>>>>>> 1959-pt-1_creation
>>>>>> http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16wat4_destiny-of-a-man-
>>>>>> 1959-pt-2_creation
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Andy
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>> Andy Blunden
>>>>>> http://home.mira.net/~andy
>>>>>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-
>>> decision-making
>>>>>> On 14/01/2017 2:35 AM, Beth Ferholt wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Thank you for taking us to a shared example.  I think that
>>> having a
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Carol A Macdonald Ph.D (Edin)
>>>>> Cultural Historical Activity Theory
>>>>> Honorary Research Fellow: Department of Linguistics, Unisa
>>>>> alternative email address: tmacdoca@unisa.ac.za
>>>>>
>

More information about the xmca-l mailing list