[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [xmca] adverbial qualified movement, action, being



If ever there was a core canonical instance of "BE" in the Western cultural tradition, it may be the answer to Moses' question of the speaker in the burning bush. It's in Hebrew, a non-Indoeuropean language in which the verb is not used as a copula. In English, a common rendering is
  I AM WHO AM
It has been argued on linguistic grounds that a better rendering might be something like "I shall be as I shall be," which, if interpreted along the lines of Freire's 'de como estão sendo,"' might be rendered "I shall be being as I shall be being" (not to blaspheme, or anything).

On Thu, 6 Oct 2011, Larry Purss wrote:

If essence is "TOWARDS which a thing is moving" then what is "conclusion"
[that arrived at?]

My question is in relation to the notion that the movement towards is
"multiple" and "excess" but the conclusion is in*forming. Therefore essence
is multiple "potential" or "possibility".



On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 6:42 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

I don't know if this helps, Tony, but the German word for essence is
/wesen/, which is the past tense of being (i.e., was).
Which makes me think of Aristotle who took essence to be that towards which
a thing is moving, i.e, the future tense.

Andy


Tony Whitson wrote:

Someone sent me an off-list response to my Freire post, offering that "I
think that "ser " used by Paulo Freire refers to the essence of each
individual. " In my response, I say that I agree with ser as the essnece,
but I'm thinking Freire is trying to say our essence is our doing, not
something that we are [as with the verbal copula]. This is consistent with
Sartre, of course, but I think Freire is trying to express this in a more
radical sense, by using "ser" (at least sometimes) in a way that it should
not be translated as the noun "L'etre."


I think "ser" is not always "O ser" (= L 'etre) in Freire, as when he
writes
in the footnote "Em torno do que e de como estão sendo." (p. 1, chapter 1,
Pedagogia do Oprimido)

The English, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, is:  < preoccupation with what
and how they are "being." >


-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.**ucsd.edu<xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>]
On
Behalf Of Larry Purss
Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2011 8:56 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [xmca] adverbial qualified movement, action, being


The discussion of vivencia has me pondering


The turn to discussing "vital experience" or being as qualified being [not
qualia] seems to be an opening with potential and possibility.


Andy,

you ask if it is what we "make" of an experience that is determinative if
it
is "vital".  I would suggest that the term how we "participate" rather
than
"make" is central to exploring "vital experience".  Making is one
particular
approach to engaging vital experience.  This is a vital experience that
transforms the individual person's orientation within the world.  This is
an
agentive response that has the quality of being a "personal" decision.  I
would like to suggest this is one particular way to intergrate "vital
experience in our proceeding along pathways. I would even suggest this may
be the particular way forward that is biased as an approach within
modernity
as an ethical way of life.

From this perspective "vital experience" can be personally "undergone"


and



through struggle and courageously exploring of personal inscapes the
person
can change direction and "make" something different of their lives
[develop]


However, alternatively, the person could possibly be "met" [alterity] and
in
this "I-YOU" meeting "vital experience" is transformed and new pathways
open.  I wonder if this alternative way of engaging "vital experience" is
through "witnessing" [as I explored recently] This is another way of
engaging "vital experience" that does not emphasize the personal
courageous
aspect of transformation [as making] but rather points to "being met"
within
the "vital experience".


I've contrasted and made distinct two possible openings of development
[transformation or in*formation]  One emphasing a journey through
inscapes,
the other through intersubjective "holding environments". In actuality
there
may be multiple flow-forms and interweavings of these multiple strands of
"vital experience"  What I'm pointing to is our socio-cultural biases in
modernity  to validate the "inscapes" as legitimate [good] pathways of
transformation while invalidating the inter-subjective witnessing pathways
to transformation.  [as dependency and defended against] In other words we
don't really "trust" the other will actually respond to the calling of
"vial
experience".

Andy, I grant that after being "met" [which I believe may be developmental
in its own movement] there follow other phases or levels of transformation
that bring us back to "spaces of reason" "propositional language games"

"agentive stances of *making* ones way in the world", etc.

This becomes a cultural-historical narrative of projects and objects and
activity.  I also grant "meeting" as I'm discussing it is "normative" and
an
ethical stance towards alterity [including one's own alterity].  However
as
a particular form of participation it may have as much validity and
legitimacy as the moe courageous form of turning towards inscapes for
transormation.


Larry

______________________________**____________

_____

xmca mailing list

 <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu

 <http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>

http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>

______________________________**____________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>





--
------------------------------**------------------------------**
------------
*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/**toc/hmca20/18/1<http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1>
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.**aspx?partid=227&pid=34857<http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>

 ______________________________**____________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>

__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca


Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK  DE  19716

twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________

"those who fail to reread
 are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
                  -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca