Re: Quack! Quack! Quack! (2)

Francoise Herrmann (fherrmann who-is-at igc.apc.org)
Wed, 17 Apr 1996 09:33:10 -0700 (PDT)

Hi Robin, Hi everyone,
I think that I agree with you and with Eugene. That is, our nested
backgrounds and any overlaps (shared experience) likely do create ground
for understanding and fine dancing. And also that in any given situation
we are really free to dance and to make the dance work, regardless of
shared previous experience. Perhaps that another important ingredient
in this "stew" is affect and the mirroring that takes place.

Francoise
Francoise Herrmann
fherrmann who-is-at igc.org

>
> This is also an extremely interesting question for me. I'm very
> interested in understanding how we can talk about beliefs as shared
> (and there must be some shared component--interactions are like
> dances, and if there's no shared understanding of what the dance is
> and what the appropriate steps are, then we only step on each other's
> toes; admittedly this happens at times, but things go smoothly often
> enough to suggest some real "sharedness"...)--and yet we are each
> uniquely different. I've been conceptualizing it as a continuum of
> shared discourse representing different levels of commonality. At
> one extremely broad level we are all human beings, and so there is
> the potential for understanding one another at that level. At other
> levels, I'm a psychologist, and a northeasterner, and a liberal, and
> a catlover, and a Yalie, and so on--and I can share certain types
> of discourse with others who fit into these categories that I can't
> with those who don't. I'm also middle-class, white, and American,
> and these also shape the sorts of discourses that I share. But I also
> don't think of these different discourses as a randomly scattered,
> heterogeneous collection of possibilities within myself; instead,
> they seem hierarchically ordered--some seem more salient and more broadly
> defining than others. I think probably being white, middle-class, and
> American are the most broadly defining for me. Well, just some
> half-baked thoughts...
>
> Robin
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