Dear all
- and special thanks to Alena and Phillip C for thoughtful reports from
"lurkerdom". It has been said before that silent participation on the xmca
can be a very active experience indeed (as Alena notes). I think that this
is one of those truths that bear repeating now and then - both for the sake
of others in the same position, and for the sake of regular contributors.
What I am grappling with in my research (which is in a suspended state at
the moment) is how to link the statistical observations of the mailflow to
the lived experience of participants.
So this discussion is very valuable to me personally - and I think and hope
it is also valuable for the activity system of the list as a whole
(although I am aware that the opinions about list self-reflection differ).
Now, I have told my own story here before, but will indulge once more,
because it's the only story I have to tell and there will be people around
who have not heard it.
Phillip writes:
>I came on in late 1993. I was silent for three months.
Which is very similar to the beginning of my own presence here - late 1993
was when I came on, too, and my experience of how impressive and
stimulating I found the discussions, and how I felt like an absolute novice
(Activity Theory was more or less a Bad Word in my institutional
surrounding, for me it had the attraction of the Forbidden)... I needed
those months of listening in, and thought others should be granted the same
opportunity to enter the mailstream at their own pace. Which motivated my
position on the compulsory selfdescription issue. There was a much more
improvised practice of selfpresentation in those xdays, before the mca.
Some just stepped in for the first time on some topic of their particular
interest - like Phillip and I did (although my "first" didn't meet with any
response, as I recall), others did present themselves - particularly those
who wished to ask the list some question related to their work. In the
early days (not quite sure when they ended) there was also research funding
at the LCHC end which made it possible for people from there to take the
time for encouraging newcomers to introduce themselves.
Anyway, for my part it took another few months after that first posting to
get involved in the discussions as a contributor. When I did, it was
mediated by the midwifing of Eugene Matusov, who had posted something about
Skinner and Chomsky which I disagreed with enough to write to him offlist
about it. We had a backstage exchange about the topic for a few rounds, and
then Eugene encouraged me to post it all to the list. Well, THAT was like
finding a key - in addition to the learning benefits (can one write that?)
from a reading participation on the list I had shifted gears into the form
of learning that can be had from spinning out "ill-formed thoughts" aka
half-baked ideas AND having them become part of a collectively produced
textstream. As Phillip notes (and others have, through the years), this is
also a very emotional experience. One could, I think, write a paper in
parallel to the Rose article, making a similar point about the intermeshing
of "cognition", "emotion" and "volition" and take a scholarly mailinglist
as the case.
Jumping from one thing to another:
At 11.20 +1200 01-08-20, Phillip Capper scrobe:
>However - to surface something tacit. I am interested in the gender part of
>this discussion because a lot of my early anxiety was to do with feeling
>that the climate of the times was such that, as a male, the very act of
>posting was likely to be interpreted as one of gender politics. I don't feel
>that now - is that because of the change in stats that has been reported, or
>was I just rationalising then?
Interesting reflection, Phillip. I mean, for one thing, your observation of
how your perception of the list as welcoming the contributions of a male
participant might be related to the direction of change in gender
statistics. I guess you are aware that this agrees with the statements of
feminists (like Dale Spender) saying, basically, that it takes a lot less
than quantitatively equal occupation of the conversational floor space by
women, for the women to be perceived as dominating the conversation. How
ironic to see this confirmed here of all places (if that is what it is).
Well, discussions on gender are always a delicate balancing act in any
non-fireproofed medium... and my time for today is running out, so what
shall I say: on one hand I'm personally involved as a woman, and as having
felt less comfortable on the list in recent years than in the golden old
days before I had gotten into the position of being a Provider of Answers
instead of an Asker of Questions here ;-) ... on the other hand, I can see
the gender trends of the xmca as symptomatic of the changes in style that
Bill and Diane have dared to try describing (where I cling to numbers). A
drift towards "lecturesque scripts" would surely discourage the
thin-skinned of any gender and leave the relatively thick-skinned in the
game.
As Eugene says: What do you think?
Eva
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 01:02:12 PDT