Eva and Paul, Sara, Mary,
thank you for illuminating and struggling again with the complexities of
being an addressee / speaking subject / community participant on this list
i lack the discourse dialect of XCHAT activity theory /- so I will try
and make sense of this in some of my own way
I have found the exchanges of the last days to be quite painful and of
course facinating - they have made quite visible my own confusion about
interpreting responses and intentions in textual mediated spaces, as well
as recognising the boundaries and always present mediating factors that
make all textual readings so multiple, power filled, instructive and
contingent.
what is perhaps more powerful here, in particular when Paul and Eva cite
the "list" and messages,to clarify their utterances as speaking subjects,
is how the fixed capture in text is called upon for explanation of
interpretation, motive and response
Evan recalls Mike when she posts:
Given that a major purpose of this discussion is to have a NON-
dominating discussion among geographically/institutionally distributed
people who share certain intellectual interests, and perhaps certain values
(so many people have joined that I am not at all certain of the latter, and
perhaps misjudge the former), it is unhappy to think that we are
unwittingly recapitulating some of the same power structures we struggle
against in our formally designated work lives.
I think we can't help but do this recapitualtion struggle, except that
in this kind of exchange, the discourses and power structures are
visible, so perhaps there is some possibility for the reflexive
responses that might permit change. I don't think there is any such
thig as non-dominating discourse though.
Isn't that the nature of the beast???
The one thing that does perk my attention about this textually mediated
communication is how our former historical texts are 'called up" and
re-animated for the moment, and what historically would have been
ephemeral exchanges ( conversations at a distance) , and could only be
conjured back through memory but I see here - that the records of the
lists, as well as memories, archives and codings provide an even more
multi-layered compost to meaning - i wonder if they are still the same
messages now.
I am always interested in how we turn to the written record as evidence
for intentions, interpretation and fixing of meanings - what that means
ethically about the embodiment nature of speech genres - - how the text
re-represents meaning in our educational instituitions and of course about
the politics of textual represention in our research texts.
I think that this recent eruption of struggles around the issues of
dominating capacities of discourse are really important for this
mail-list - and shouldn't get ignored
the academic speech genres always seem to try and disguise this function
this is helps me make sense of the implications of all genres as social
action, that the polyvocal aspects of genres always exceed our intentions,
even when they are historically "over" but get reanimated by reading,so
possibly do their power effects effects and also how I might begin to re-
negotiate the community of pratice I am analysing for my diss.
Kathryn Alexander
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