Jay,
On my mind in reading your paper, especially the section on identity, was
the earlier discussions of embodied self, and all the other selves from
Judy's posting. The dynamic, historical "I" has been a reocurring theme is
various literature I have been reading, and it was refreshing to see it
discussed. For example, Fernando Gonzalez Rey critiques Leontiev notion
that personality is an internal "moment" of activity, and argues for a
notion of subjectivity as having its own "ontological" status that seems
very similar to your dynamical "I".
The notion of the historical "I" critiques activity theory on one end, but
also embraces a cultural-historical as apposed to biological, eternal,
universal explanation of that "I" on the other. I would be interested in
how you see the historical, dynamic "I" playing out with the "temporary
me". Since you mentioned Walkerdine, and the paper was about education,
how does this play out not only with internalization being the goal as
apposed to the byproduct, but now identity. I guess this is where I would
seperate Lave and Walkerdine to an certain extent, in that, for Walkerdine
the historical "I", becomes reified as eternal and then becomes a place for
the regulation of pleasure in a "child centered" educational environment.
I guess my question or concern is that you mention the "male" because of
his identity seeks out activities that will further support his identity.
Especially when talking about education it seems it is more about being put
in certain activities rather than seeking them out perse. I just finished
Gaskin's wonderful article on play in a Mayan community, and clearly
knowledge, internalization, learning, and identity are more of a byproduct
than a specific goal of the activity setting. While your argument that what
is going on is identity from the student's perspective is appealing, I am
still left wondering what this means in an activity setting that approaches
such things as learning or internalization as goal or object, rather than a
byproduct. Is identity seen in the same "problem space" as knowledge or
internalization or is it seen as "romantically" good? My "reading" of Lave
is more on the romantic end, where as, I see Walkerdine on the "problem
space" end.
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Nate Schmolze
http://www.geocities.com/~nschmolze/
schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu
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"Pedogogics is never and was never politically indifferent,
since, willingly or unwillingly, through its own work on the psyche,
it has always adopted a particular social pattern, political line,
in accordance with the dominant social class that has guided its
interests".
L.S. Vygotsky
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> What about 'identity'? In the paper I offer this as a notion to focus our
> attention on longer timescales of learning that go well beyond that of
> particular social interaction events or short-term experiences. What I am
> really talking about is the process of 'identity development' and I
assume
> a view of identities as multiplex, metastable, dispositional,
situationally
> adaptable, etc. The link to learning comes from such work as that of Jean
> Lave or Valerie Walkerdine, who emphasize that what, how, from whom, how
> enthusiastically, and with what longer-term effects we learn depends a
> great deal on how the activity in which we learn also functions as an
> activity in which we can perform various aspects of our identities
> (masculine or feminine, artist or scientist, conservative or radical,
> Chicano or Swede, Gen-X or WW2 vet, fundamentalist or atheist, bit of
both,
> something in between, Other, etc.).
>
> Both moments and durations contribute to identity development. Not just
> single experiences cumulated, but invariant and perhaps taken-for-granted
> features of our lives that continue over long timescales.
>
> The principle of heterochrony is illustrated by the role of the human
body
> as a material participant in longterm identity development processes, but
> which is also a material participant in short-term actions and
> interactions. The material dynamics of the body in some situated activity
> is described by its dispositions-for-action in that situation and
activity
> (cf. Bourdieu's _habitus_). Those dispositions are the product of, and
> participate in, rather long timescale processes (cf. the 'durations'
above)
> and mediate the interaction between those processes-of-a-lifetime and the
> present processes-of-a-moment. In this function the body is not unlike a
> book, a material 'text', made and circulated in longterm processes, but
> capable also of functioning in short-term processes-now in such a way
that
> embodied features of longterm processes 'make a difference' in what
happens
> in the short term.
>
> Instead of reifying a notion like 'identity' and treating it as some
> 'thing' or inherent quality of a thing, this way of talking restores our
> sense of the material dynamics that underlie the phenomena it names: the
> activities in which dispositions are shaped, and the activities that are
> shaped by dispositions; the timescales on which these processes take
place
> and the logic of their relations to one another. The semantics of our
> language leads us to make nouns out of the more verb-like processes
> involved, and then we have to remind ourselves by speaking of, say,
> 'performing our identities'. The language of process naturally draws our
> attention to dynamics and timescales; we only need to remind ourselves to
> pay attention also to the constitutive faster processes and the
> constraining slower processes as well as the focal process, and then to
the
> logics and media of heterochrony. The language of objects should
complement
> that of processes (by naming the artifacts, bodies, etc. that mediate
> heterochrony) rather than replace it. We must learn to think even of
> objects as only the more persistent effects of some dynamical synchronies
> among processs, as inherently metastable, as having a characteristic
> lifetime on some timescale. "Panta rhei; ouden de menei" -- Herakleitos.
>
> JAY.
>
> PS. All things flow/change; nothing just persists.
>
> ---------------------------
> JAY L. LEMKE
> PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
> CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
> JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
> <http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
> ---------------------------
>