Re(2): Re(2): A sign forms a structural centre which determines the whole

From: Diane Hodges (dhodges@ceo.cudenver.edu)
Date: Sat Jan 13 2001 - 06:07:02 PST


andy writes
>The problem for me, is what to do about this mediation which constitutes a
>kind of "magical thinking"? (I use the term in the sense it is used in
>"Ape, Primitive Man & Child") Is it possible for people to collaborate on
>a
>world-wide scale without a mediating symbol-structure such as the economy?
>Vygotsky points to a stage in thinking when we no longer need the symbol,
>we can internalise its meaning and dispense with the external aid.

it seems to me there's a paradox here - you can admit to a mediating
symbol-structure
that is based on an external politic of economy,
and then wonder how to collaborate without it - don't we need the symbol
as a link to the material effects of this?
as the economy is dispersed in such gross contortions, understanding how
children determine their selves-in-relation to an external value that is
at the same time
an internal structure, demands a recognition of the effect of that
interaction, no?
the interactions are as dispersed as the economies,
people are effected in widely different relations, based on the same
'sign' of
economic values, and here i mean material relations, quality of life,
to the extent hat parents will sell their children to sextrade
distributors, because the family itself can't afford to raise a girl,
knowing a girl represents no income for the family outside the sex-trade,
and so on -
what i mean is that the values are infused with gender constructs, race
constructs,
and so on, as structural effects that are inseparable from the external
economic.

in Biafra, just after the Civil War in the 1970s,
the children there identified us - white folks - as representations of
"cadeaux!" and that
was all anyone said to us, called to us, demanded from us, and so on -
race was identified in the same context of economic value -
to assume that an objective distance from the material effects of this
structuring sign
is not quite ethical, is it? to derive a "magical thinking" for a global
context that is so
fabulously complicated in relation to the dominance of economics?
diane

   **********************************************************************
                                        :point where everything listens.
and i slow down, learning how to
enter - implicate and unspoken (still) heart-of-the-world.

(Daphne Marlatt, "Coming to you")
***********************************************************************

diane celia hodges

 university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
==================== ==================== =======================
 university of colorado, denver, school of education

Diane_Hodges@ceo.cudenver.edu



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