Re peter's april discussion paper

From: Martin Owen (mowen@rem.bangor.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Apr 20 2000 - 07:47:06 PDT


In realtion of some of Helen's comments I was once asked by a History
Professor "Do you really think Shakespeare would have written better plays
if he had had a word processor?"

The answer is "not better, but different".

Our relation to writing text is undoubtedly also mediated by the
technology used for writing. When pen and paper were expensive, writing on
paper was a luxury few could afford. Having an "infinate supply of papaer
and ink and the ability to delete cut, and paste at will alters our
relationship substantially.

Shakespere, I assume, was like a modern playwright/director. He would sit
in rehearsals, attend early performances and judge the timing and the
laughter etc. amnd adjust his text appropriately. The ability to do this
in the days of a wordprocessor... to have newly printed scripts several
times a day would surely change the nature of the text. (My earlry days
inradio revealed the difficulty when directors changed individual actor's
parts on individual actor's scripts creating difficulty in reconciling the
whole performance into one script.). Nevertheless the text is altered and
mediated throughout the production process and technology has made this
much more likely.

So "Where is meaning?"

I do not fully accept Nate's point:

"So, for me, saying meaning is in the text or meaning is in the individual
(or group) misses the point that meaning is in the Activity itself. Where
sense and meaning become joined, where the objective and subjective become
joined, where the individual and the collective become joined etc."

largely because we have this "singular" meaning. Meaning is something
which is being shifted and changed throughout all these processes. The
text is a snapshot of a mediated moment of meaning making for an
indivudual. This meaning becomes mediated, and changed again and again as
it is read, uttered, heard, re-written (is this the "activity" itslef???).

E.H.Carr, the English historian of 20thC Russia, is often quoted with his
phrase "History is made in the writing". That it is the externalisation of
thought onto paper for others to inspect is what History (with capital
"H") is. In the writing the historian's model of the past "becomes" into
existance, but also its availablility for others the question the model.
Carr was clearly in tune with Peter's thesis about the role of text. (E.H.
Carr "What is History?", Pelican)

In contrast, although writing is important on Physics it is not the only
way that meaning is constructed or demonstrated. here we are closer to
Nate's view of the "activity" itslef. <aside> I may be accused of having a
too romantic view of physics here</aside>. <aside> Feynman won his Nobel
in part for his work for finding a way of annotating QED with his
squiggles</aside>. Murray Gell-Mann tells a story of his early encounters
in Princeton or MIT or some such establishment. The august theoretical
physicists sat in front discussing the effect on the Universe if such and
such a constant had a value of "1". Murray was sitting in the back in awe
of the guys. he sat next to what in modern day paralance would have been a
"geek". The "geek" interjected "we already measured that, it's 3".

At that point Murray realised it was not each other that the august
theoreticians had to please-it was the experimentors. Here meaning is made
by the interplay between two communities living symbiotically. Here
meaning is made by the sharing of "data">> modelling and measuring. Two
different kinds of externalisation. The difference however is (of course
the accumulation of pre-reading Eva suggests) but ht eability to conceive
and interpret and mediate data in many kinds of ways which reveal
different and new meanings.

We have some feeeling of what it takes to become a " good critical reader"
of texts like Hamlet. to be able to have some synergy with otherness, to
be able to realte to a vast range of empirical and other textual
experiences. the capability of "intertextuality" as described in Peter's
paper.

An emerging problem for me is in physics ( having an interest in how
people come to "model" sytems and processes explicitly), on the dynamic
between the "mental" and the "public". The idea of the "transactional
zone" is valuable here. However textuality is problematic. (is this why
the Physics texts proved problematic for Nosper?). My problem in
understanding comes from the inadequacy of my language/knowledge to
describe the interpretation of "data" and dynamics. To use their
experience and past "textual" encounters" to find pattern and dynamics not
expressed in text. (perhaps I should read Bergson... it was inspirational
in December)

running out of steam

Martin



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 23 2000 - 09:21:17 PDT