[Xmca-l] Re: A new book: Dialogic Pedagogy and Polyphonic Research Art: Bakhtin by and for Educators

[Greg Thompson]

Ana,

Isn't it delightful to try to accomplish "dialogue" in a medium such as
this? I think I'll have to respond in toto rather than as proper
conversational second parts as you have done - for fear that things will
get too messy and difficult to track (much different from if we were having
this conversation in person - or, at least, a different kind of messiness!).

Regarding the issue of universality, as an anthropologist, this is an
occupational hazard. I should be clear that my question is different from
the concern with "scaling up" (or "mechanization") which seeks to identify
teaching practices that can be simply applied to all teaching encounters.
My concern is precisely that there may be some places where this might not
be the most ethical approach - or perhaps that it might need some further
specification and/or modifications.

As for "sustainability", yes I have a slightly different understanding from
what you are describing (what you are describing seems to be more like the
"scaling up" issue I've mentioned above - i.e., how to mass produce
education). My question is more of an ecological one: is it sustainable in
the sense that you can put it out into the world and it will be able to be
taken up by teachers and others and practiced, and that this can be
ongoing? Now, granted, the ecologies that I'm talking about are human ones.
Hence my other question: what would need to change in order to make it
sustainable? (and, relatedly, what is keeping it from being sustainable?).
I like your suggestions and agree that standardized testing is a major
impediment to the kind of EOD practice that you describe (as well as many
other kinds of good pedagogical practices!).

On the issue of the pre-existing nature of the subject, we may have to
agree to disagree. Whether or not that is the case may, in part, depend on
whether or not you equate "unfinalizable" with "undefined". I'm no expert
in Bakhtin and I'm a bit out of touch, but from what I recall of my reading
of him, the point is that we are consummated by the recognition of others
and that is central to our emerging definitions of who we are. There is a
subject here. The ethical caution that I see Bakhtin offering is that this
moment of recognition (and hence this subject) should not be final - i.e.,
that is who we have come to be, not as finalized subjects, but as
subjects-in-the-making, subjects abuilding (bildung?). Thus, for example,
one doesn't wake each morning with a clean slate in one's relationship with
one's partner as if their subject-hood is undefined. In other words, I
don't think Bakthin is being ahistorical about subjects. Rather, in my
reading of B, if one loves one's partner, one wakes each morning with a
clean slate of who they can BECOME (unfinalized) but without neglecting who
they have been to oneself (since to recognize them as "partner" is to
already begin from an understanding of their subject-hood prior to your
subsequent encounters with them that day). That's just my take. And note
that we may in fact be in total agreement on this but just emphasizing
different sides of the argument?

As for the comment about Martin Packer's book, I should have clarified that
it is not about studying subjectivity "objectively" but rather is a
critique of this entire enterprise. If you get a chance to have a read of
it, I think you'll find some strong resonances. Apologies to Martin for
mischaracterizing his work in my initial comment ("that's not what I
meant!").

As for how this is "ontological", I like the direction that you propose -
this is about the constitution of subjects (and, perhaps, about the
constitution of reality and the worlds that we inhabit?). That's some big
stuff.

Anyway, thanks much for the engagement (which I'm happy to continue -
although maybe there are more productive directions than those I have taken
thus far?).

And to this point of possibility and becoming, I thought I'd offer a
favorite quote of mine from Lloyd Alexander's book *The Castly Llyr.* This
is Lord Dalben's parting advice to the young Princess Eilonwy as she sets
out on an adventure and is rather unsure of her ability to handle the
challenges that this adventure will entail. It captures the challenge of
allowing others' becoming (even if it is in spite of themselves): Dalben
says to Eilonwy: "For each of us comes a time when we must become more than
what we are."

Cheers,
greg




On Sat, May 25, 2019 at 10:51 AM Ana Marjanovic-Shane <anamshane@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear Greg, David and all,
>
>
>
> Thanks, David, for another thoughtful and provoking email. Although I am
> faster this time in my reply, I would still like to count it in the “slow
> dialogue”! J
>
>
>
> Thanks for the opportunity for having a very thoughtful Saturday morning.
>
>
>
> See my responses between your lines below (in red).
>
>
>
>
>
> Ana
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> *Ana Marjanovic-Shane*
>
> Phone: 267-334-2905
>
> Email: anamshane@gmail.com
>
>
>
>
>
> *From: *"xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu" <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
> *Reply-To: *"eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> *Date: *Friday, May 24, 2019 at 3:33 PM
> *To: *"eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> *Cc: *Eugene Matusov <ematusov@udel.edu>, "mikhail.gradovski@uis.no" <
> mikhail.gradovski@uis.no>
> *Subject: *[Xmca-l] Re: A new book: Dialogic Pedagogy and Polyphonic
> Research Art: Bakhtin by and for Educators
>
>
>
> Ana,
>
>
>
> Thank you so much for your very thoughtful description/explanation of
> Ethical Ontological Dialogism. I know that by now you probably thought I
> was avoiding your answer, but I've been trying to figure how to offer a
> reasonable response to the feast that you put forward in your email and
> trying to figure out how I might respond to your post in a manner consonant
> with ethical ontological dialogism. I'm pretty sure I'll fail at the
> latter, but feast I did.
>
>
>
> *ANA:* Thanks
>
>
>
> I'm also curious if a medium like a listserve can brook the challenge of
> slow replies - replies that don't come for days or even weeks. I'm always
> surprised to see how quickly conversations come and go even in a (virtual)
> place as thoughtful as XMCA. Perhaps this is a sign of the times; you can
> find "dialogue" everywhere but seldom does it amount to much - whether
> ethically (cf. the dialogical fires that regularly erupt in social media)
> or ontologically (cf. the "dialogue" of talking heads on just about any
> media outlet who are expected to instantly opine on subjects about which
> they've had little time to think). The dialogues on XMCA are perhaps a bit
> slower than some of these other "dialogues" but even here on XMCA it seems
> the half-life of a comment is about 24 hours. So I'm wondering what a
> slower listserve might look like and whether slow replies might perhaps be
> a step toward what you have outlined as ethical ontological dialogism.
>
>
>
> *ANA:* I think that we should try to do slow dialogues among other
> dialogues. It is true that your original email and a simple question on
> elaborating Ethical Ontological Dialogism (EOD), made me slow down and
> start to think about what I see as an essence that can be somehow described
> in a concentrated way but without loss of life and subjectivity. It was me,
> first who slowed down the discussion. And I liked the time it took to think
> about the issue.
>
>
>
>
>
> That's all just to say that I was delighted by your response (and the fact
> that you took some time to respond) and I hope you'll forgive me for
> multiplying that time in my response (and, of course, that last paragraph
> could be seen as just an attempt to rationalize my failure to be a
> responsible partner in dialogue...).
>
>
>
> Anyway, as for the project itself, I find it quite exciting and
> invigorating. It is a wonderfully interesting project to tease out the
> implications of Bakhtin's work for teachers' practice and the way you have
> outlined this in your email really sings to me.
>
>
>
> If I were to ask questions about the project (and maybe some of these
> answers are contained in the book - I've asked our library to order it), I
> have two major questions that stand out. One has to do with sustainability
> of these principles and the other has to do with the universality of them.
>
>
>
> *ANA:* Before I reply to any one of them below – you may notice that both
> questions are about issues important in a different, more prevalent,
> monologic approach of searching the “universal” and erasing the uniqueness
> of subjectivity by the notion of “sustainability” – which implies that
> teaching should strive to be something that can be replicated by others.
> (just a quick comment – which ties into your next paragraph)
>
>
>
> With regard to sustainability, along with David Kirshner's question: "Do
> you not tremble at the selflessness that this posture demands?", I wonder
> if this is the kind of thing that teachers in major public school systems
> can easily sustain? Or is there something else that is needed in order to
> be able to enable teachers to realize this kind of practice? What things
> might need to change?
>
>
>
>
>
> *ANA:* Sustainability, in my interpretation, (correct me if I am wrong),
> runs directly in contradiction to dialogicity! Sustainability means basing
> teaching on “the best practices” – or replicating past “models,” that seem
> to be working good. That very process in its nature is monologic,
> introducing something that is above and erases the uniqueness of each
> person’s subjectivity, and thus each teacher’s striving to create and be
> surprised by new moment-to-moment evolving meanings in dialogic
> relationships with the equally unique and unpredictable students. That
> cannot be “sustained”, because such a process cannot be guaranteed, as it
> is different for each participant.
>
>
>
> Yes, you, Greg and David Kirschner might say “I tremble at the
> selflessness that this posture demands” but this trembling for me is the
> sign of a pulse of life. Pulse of life that can live freed of the
> mechanization through which the contemporary education attempts to process
> the participants in education.
>
>
>
> What needs to change to enable teachers this kind of practice? A lot of
> things! But some countries may be timidly starting on this path (For
> instance New Zealand removed national educational standards
> https://education.govt.nz/news/national-standards-removed/ !) Of course,
> removing national standards is just a first step. There are for sure many
> more things that will have to be changed – and not all the same things for
> all the people in education. But I also think that the changes need to be
> broadly directed at creating ecologies of education in which teaching and
> learning can take a lot more authorial and creative turn than it is
> possible now. What exactly would that mean – will probably be very
> different for each teacher and each student.
>
>
>
> With regard to universalizability, I wonder if you have thought much about
> the ideology of the subject that underlies this project? As much as the
> project sings to me, I wonder how much of that is because it is based on an
> ideology of the subject that resonates with me (I'm a fan of Bakhtin's
> notion of the subject as articulated in Author and Hero in Aesthetic
> Activity). As an anthropologist I have to ask the question: what if the
> culture that you are working in requires acknowledgment of some fixed
> characteristics of the subject being addressed, perhaps even as finalized
> and finished categories? Relatedly, I wonder if there might not be need for
> some awareness of patterns of difference whether developmental differences,
> cultural differences, and other differences that are important to engage
> with in order to engage in an EOD manner with others?
>
>
>
> *ANA:* You ask “what if the culture that you are working in requires
> acknowledgment of some fixed characteristics of the subject being
> addressed, perhaps even as finalized and finished categories?”
>
> I think that when a culture requires acknowledgement of some fixed
> characteristics of the subject being addressed, that culture in itself has
> a non-dialogic ideology – ideology that requires and counts on suppressing
> the uniqueness of subjectivity and, thus, suppressing the meaning-making
> practices. So, yes, if the ideology of a culture is monologic, a project to
> fully dialogize teaching would be hard, potentially impossible, and would
> have to be “smuggled” under the radar of what the educational authorities
> demand. This is, in fact, what happens today in most conventional schools
> that are governed in a strictly hierarchical, authoritarian way, demanding
> reproduction of culture, ideology and dogma by setting these ideologies,
> standards and dogmas as the only legitimate ones, and enforcing them with
> standardized testing.
>
>
>
> Even the recognition of differences in the form of the talk about
> developmental differences (developmentally appropriate curriculum),
> cultural differences (culturally sensitive curriculum), individual
> differences in special education (various accommodations specified in the
> Individual Service Plans (ISPs), etc. – this recognition is still about how
> to strive toward, aim at, and somehow reach the prescribed standardized and
> pre-set educational end-points, despite the special circumstances of
> diversity, which are all perceived as forms of an educational handicap!
>
>
>
> In my view, Bakhtin inspired dialogism does not recognize any preexisting
> subject, nor any pre-existing fixed characteristics of the subject.
>
>
>
> Dialogicity is a stance that assumes that subjectivity is born in dialogue
> – it is not a given, not even for the person her/him-self. Rather, one’s
> subjectivity is constantly being born in one’s own dialogic project of
> becoming a person, in dialogue, where one discovers pregnant possibilities
> for “I” to become “ME”.
>
>
>
> Put slightly differently, is it possible that recognizing pre-existing
> persons as part of (fixed) pre-existing categories might be a necessary
> part of an ethical ontological dialogism.
>
>
>
> *ANA:* For me: No! (see above).
>
>
>
> In other words, is there some other end of the spectrum opposite of a
> total rejection of these positive categories and patterns that is necessary
> for an ethical ontological dialogism?
>
>
>
> *ANA:* You assume that the opposite of not recognizing unique individual
> subjectivity of others – is “recognition of preexisting person as part of
> (fixed) pre-existing categories”. This assumption is a trap – as it stays
> in the same realm of the given (positive), i.e. given in the world as such.
> However, the question is not whether the uniqueness of the subjectivity is
> given or not, the question is about whether our subjectivity is a given or
> our subjectivity emerges in a continuing transcendence of the given.
>
>
>
> It seems that this positive categorization is a part of ethical dialogical
> practice in much of our intimate encounters - whether the mother
> anticipating the needs of a nursing child, a child anticipating their
> parent's wishes (in Korea there is a term "nunchi" which is one of the most
> fundamental ethical values of certain kinds of relationships and involves
> the anticipation of the needs of significant others; importantly, these are
> often in hierarchical relationships), a teacher designing a curriculum for
> incoming students based on what little is known of their developmental age,
> or the anticipatory removal of images of snakes by a man whose spouse is
> ophidiophobic. Prediction as part of the anticipation of needs hardly seems
> ethically problematic in these cases and, in fact, it seems to be exactly
> the opposite.
>
>
>
> *ANA:* It is very important, in my view that you notice that a mother
> (caregiver) keeps anticipating the needs (and the subjectivity) of a child
> – i.e. that an ethical thing is to anticipate someone’s subjectivity!! I
> think that this is the core of an ethical approach – to *anticipate*
> someone’s subjectivity – and yet not to assume that one can know it, or
> that subjectivity is (fully) knowable. To me, that means what Bakhtin
> conceptualized as “unfinalizability”.
>
>
>
> I would think that this would also mean that the goal of psychology
> -understanding others - has the potential to be a deeply ethical practice
> in the EOD sense. The one caveat is that it shouldn't be seen as the final
> word on any one subject - i.e., you can never fully "know" a person via the
> categories that they might fit into.
>
>
>
> If I may anticipate(!) your response, I assume that an EOD approach would
> not avoid this but would simply be to emphasize that this is NOT the same
> as using one's knowledge of the Other as a final determination - as a
> determination of the Other's "essence and potential". That seems a critical
> point.
>
>
>
> *ANA:* No. EOD approach is different for me. EOD approach is in
> anticipating surprises from oneself and the others, inviting oneself and
> the others to further transcend the given and making opportunities for such
> transcendence; rather than simply being aware that one should not finalize
> the other. And to develop it further, “anticipation” of the other’s
> subjectivity is about being genuinely interested in the other. This genuine
> interests opens a door for the other to join the dialogue – in which all
> the participants can have an opportunity for discovering/constructing and
> transcending their subjectivities.
>
>
>
> A few other thoughts:
>
>
>
> I can't help but see strong parallels between your critique of social
> science research and the critique offered by Martin Packer in his book The
> Science of Qualitative Research. Latour seems to be one of the main common
> touchpoints, but thematically you are engaged in very similar projects -
> the question of how to study "subjectivity" "objectively".
>
>
>
> *ANA:* In fact, NO. The Ethical Ontological Dialogism is not about
> studying subjectivity “objectively”, but is about providing opportunities
> for and inviting people’s subjectivities to start/continue emerging in all
> the unpredictable and intrepid ways imaginable (and unimaginable)
> transcendence.
>
>
>
> The major difference is that where you turn to Bakhtin's notion of
> unfinalizability, he turns to Foucault's notion of an "historical ontology
> of ourselves". Regardless of that, I see huge resonances between your work.
> And regardless of those resonances, I imagine that bringing EOD to social
> science research would be another angle to develop more substantially (if
> you haven't already!).
>
>
>
>
>
> Oh, and a question: what is "ontological" about EOD?
>
>
>
> *ANA:* Ahh, the most important question!….
>
>
>
> To say it quickly – to me the “ontological” means that for the dialogic
> participants the dialogue matters on the level of their dialogic
> subjectivity! It matters for who they are! It matters for their ideas about
> the world, the others and themselves. It matters for what they desire, what
> they fear, what they think they can’t live with or without, etc.
> “Ontologically” engaged dialogue makes a difference for the continuing
> transcendence of the given – it can and does change big and/or small things
> relevant for the person and her/his personhood.
>
>
>
> But, of course, this question requires a lot more analysis.
>
>
>
> I have more thoughts but I think I've already said too much...
>
>
>
> *ANA: *😊. Me too.
>
>
>
>
>
> Once again, many thanks for your thoughtful and lengthy response. I look
> forward to reading more.
>
>
>
> Very best,
>
> Greg
>


-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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