"We are living with a contradiction here, and when I look at the patterns
of participation I am always reminded that there's a
lot of silence in this conversation -- and I am convinced that this is not
just the silence of participants who are subscribed but "absent" --
travelling, offline, or just too busy to even read the mail they're
receiving -- and not just the silence of active readers (whose invisible
contribution to the activity puzzles me, methodologically, as much as Nate)
or the silence due to lack of time for writing or disinterest in current
topics. There will also be the silences of participants for whom the XMCA
is NOT a safe place for "speaking"."
Speaking of contradictions, what I have found interesting is where silence
is not. I have had a steady flow of messages by members interested in
having the benefit of a collective reading. On one end we have members who
see a collective reading / discussion as beneficial to their own work, yet
on the other end that benefit is contingent upon the members that read and
discuss their work.
XCMA has given me a degree of "cultural capital" that would be difficult to
receive in any other place. That "cultural capital" is primarily the
breaking down of walls (student-professor, teacher-professors,
anthropology-psychology etc) that is often difficult to achieve in other
contexts. The breaking down of the division of labor still needs to
address the diversity of needs of its members. One such tension is of
course putting out half backed ideas and the critical processing of those
ideas. Another such tension are members that may or may not participate in
ongoing multilougue but see more structured activities such as collective
readings beneficial.
The contradiction, for me, is how XCMA can be a community to meet (and
support) the diversity of needs of its members. I am probally taking it
out of context (sorry Vera) but one thing that stood out in *Notebooks of
the Mind* was creativity (papers up for discussion) as a gift to culture
(XCMA). In this sense, (not always directly) those half backed ideas
formed something "more baked". The collective reading and discussion (from
my point of view) is a way to keep the circle going.
As a gift, Eva's papers are very interesting. The relationship between the
emergance of XCMA and the poilitics of a conservative restoration (not so
much unlike the present) where the idea of having a diverse group of
professors and students was too threatening. The history of struggles over
time in attempts to support members through collective readings. The
relationship between trust/community building and multilougues. These
issues (contradictions) seem very pertinant to the present.
Nate