mike,
i have further info on subscribing to MCA. the articles of interest are in
vol 7 (last year) and to have access them requires a subscription for 2000.
the person who enters subscription info at LEA has been out and will not be
back until next Tuesday. According to one person at LEA, once the order is
taken and entered into the system it still takes several days to clear and
receive an access code for the electronic version. Another person said that
the code could be provided right away.
I personally won't be able to participate since Humboldt State University
doesn't subscribe to MCA and I can't really justify paying $35 to be able to
read two articles. This brings up an issue in general about the difference
between the kind of online access that has been made available for previous
discussions and those which require access to the non-online journal. In
this case I misunderstood (projected what I wanted) in thinking that the
article that was decided upon would be posted to the MCA site for universal
access. My mistake. I wouldn't (necessarily) have suggested reading the
Bakhtin piece had I realized that my own access would be so problematic.
As it is I can only participate with my general knowledge of Bakhtin from
readings of his original work but this seems beside the point (almost as
much as someone who would comment on Hicks without an having read Bakhtin?)
In this sense, my main concern is that a notion of morality quite foreign to
what Bakhtin himself has written is guiding some of Jay's interpretations.
In fact it is very difficult to find what Jay might mean by "moral"
(remember I haven't read Hicks so I'm not sure if she specifically addresses
this). In the entirety of the 4 posts he has made on this to present, I
only found one statement to clarify this, in the first post: "emotional
answerability as a form of moral responsibility ", which of course doesn't
really say what "moral" is but basically gives an instance of it although
the very concept of "emotional answerability" seems somewhat questionable to
me.
A more extensive passage seems to clarify Jay's (also Hick's?)
interpretation:
"One ground of moral answerability is bodily and physical: in the historical
human tradition, if I am close enough to hear you, I am close enough to be
physically vulnerable to your anger and physically receptive to your
comforting. For me moral answerability arises from our human vulnerability
to pain; co-presence always implicates these issues: threat/promise,
pain/pleasure. From the whispers of love to the screams of attack, from
soothing coo to painful shout, the sound qualities of speech belong in part
to this very basic system of meaning. The subtler effects of language, its
rhythms intonations accentuations extend the meaning possibilities that
grow out of the most basic moral answerability of all interpersonal
interaction."
As an anthropologist I have serious difficulties with this since it somehow
implies a universal morality that somehow stands outside and beyond the
clearly subjective (or alternately/equivalently elevates the subjective to
the universal). Clearly, ever since J.T. Hall's "The Silent Language" we
have known that the dimensions of bodily interaction are as culturally
specific as are languages. What is acceptable personal distance in one
culture is defined as rude in another (on both ends, too close: rude in
America, too distant: cold/rude/distant in Peru). Or I wonder what the
moral answerability of the act of getting on a subway car in NYC in which
one other person was seated and going up and sitting very close (in the same
seat?) to that person. Clearly this would cause the other person to be very
up tight and frightened but in fact if one got on an public conveyance in
other parts of the world and sat at a great distance it would cause similar
concnerns.
So one has to ask whether any morality can be constructed on the basis of
emotions.
Bakhtin's primary work on the body: Rabelais and His World is quite
interesting in its own right but I wonder how this fits into the framework
of ":moral answerability" since there he clearly endorses the language of
the market which doesn't refer to the kind, respectful, deferent (clearly
reflecting bourgeois values of civility) language and bodily orientation Jay
outlines in his concept of "moral answerability" but rather celebrates the
grotesque, the insult, the leveling and recognition of the bodies very
corruptibility and ambiguity. Celebrates the inversion of the "moral"
values of the established order, etc.
I of course am also intersted to see how Hicks relates to the
Volosinov/Bakhtin issue. From the perspective of Volosinov we are much
closer to the social construction of self persepctive than the direction Jay
seems to be taking (as I understand it) with a concept "moral answerability"
that seems to me to be derived almost competely out of a metaphysics of
individualism. In Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin basically traces the
demise of laughter (related to a distancing from the phenomenologically
experienced ambiguous body with all its juices and leaks) and although he
never makes the connection, it is quite clear that this is historically
confruent with the emergence of bourgeois society (and bourgeois morality).
My feeling is that Bakhtin would not go along with the interpretation of
"moral answerability" that Jay seems to be grafting onto the rather
different framework of "answerability" in general.
On the other hand, I strongly support Jay's intentions of
"re-humanizing educational practice and trying to move it away from its
bureaucratic dead-end of impersonal curricula and professionally distant
teachers, to some place where it is recognized as necessary that teachers
and students have individual and consequential personal relationships in
order to scaffold learning, and where value issues again become legitimate
foci of teaching and learning. "
I'm just not sure that his interpretation of Bakhtin leads in this
direction.
But I haven't read Hicks' original so am in a rather odd position. I don't
think there's a copy of MCA within 250 miles of where I live right now (HSU
doesn't have it) so I'll have to wait until next week, when I go to SoCal,
to read it, since I can't justify subscribing to last year's journal at the
present time.
Paul H. Dillon
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Cole <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2001 9:18 PM
Subject: timely subs
>
> A couple of people have written saying that they have subscribed to MCA in
> order to be able just into the Hicks discussion but their subs are not
> going through. Peggy is on the case. It seems like one should expect to
> have the sub enabled within 24 hours but in some cases it takes longer. We
> are going after the "takes longer part" and would appreciate anyone
> being held up to let us know-- mcole@ucsd.edu or pbengel@weber.ucsd.edu.
>
> Meantime, those who already have the article and want to participate rest
> assured we will wait until the system catches up with itself.
> mike
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Mar 01 2001 - 01:01:14 PST