RE: [xmca] Notions of suffering, enduring, undergoing

[Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>]

________________________________________
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Tony Whitson [twhitson@UDel.Edu]
Sent: 05 November 2011 15:20
To: ablunden@mira.net; eXtended Mind, Culture,   Activity
Cc: Tony Whitson
Subject: Re: [xmca] Notions of suffering, enduring, undergoing

I may be worth noting that the American Civil War was 1861-1865.
Holmes was born in 1841; Dewey was born in 1859.

On Sun, 6 Nov 2011, Andy Blunden wrote:

> That's an interesting observation, Robert. I have been trying to summarise in
> what way Dewey did not quite get to where Vygotsky got to. Up till today I
> had written that "Pragmatism could explain ideas as means of adaptation to
> the world, but not why people were prepared to die for them; it could explain
> how people pursued goals, but was less effective in understanding how people
> formed their goals." But then I read the excellent article "Experience is
> Pedagogical" where he has an exposition on interest, which fits well with
> Leontyev's ideas about how children develop an interest in something. He is
> very strong on the question of the primacy of interest. And he certainly
> agrees that everything depends on motivation, will and teleology. Menand's
> wonderful book, "The Metaphysical Club" placed the emergence of Pragmatism as
> a reaction to the disastrous Civil War, and what they saw as reckless pursuit
> of Big Ideas. So this seemed to tally. The Pragmatists could not understand
> why the Abolitionists and Confederates were prepared to enter a national
> holocaust on a principle.
> Dewey says that "the chief characteristic trait of the pragmatic notion of
> reality is precisely that no theory of Reality in general, /überhaupt/, is
> possible or needed." Holmes' theory of law rests on the same conviction. I
> still feel that there is something missing in when they rule out the role of
> abstractions in motivating human beings. And that is what lies at the root of
> Tragedy, isn't it? I suspect Dewey well knew tragedy, but dedicated his life
> trying to eliminate it!
>
> Andy
>
> Robert Lake wrote:
>> Andy,
>> That is an astute observation about the notion of "happy".
>> Maxine Greene owes much of her view of aesthetics to Dewey's "Art as
>> experience"
>> yet her main critique of Dewey was that "he had no sense of the tragic".
>> Unlike Vygotsky whose personal perezhivanie  was marked by the tragic and
>> perhaps
>> as Kozulin speculates, was one reason he was fascinated with Hamlet.
>> Robert Lake
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 9:25 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>
>>     In this same essay, Dewey is insistent that an experience is not
>>     composed of components which are respectively practical, emotional
>>     and intellectual, but these adjectives (he says) only arise in
>>     subsequent discourse about experience, when we interpret
>>     experience. An experience is essentially an irreducibly all of
>>     these things, and in his view any attempt to seaprate out an
>>     emotional component will destory the unity of the experience.
>>
>>     And I liked it when Vygotsky said, in Educational Psychology:
>>     "People with great passions, people who accomplish great deeds,
>>     people who possess strong feelings, even people with great minds
>>     and a strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys and
>>     girls."
>>
>>     I think the same goes for "happy little boys and girls."
>>
>>     Andy
>>     Rod Parker-Rees wrote:
>>
>>         Hi Larry,
>>
>>         I certainly didn't want to suggest that children are (or even
>>         should be) care-free, only to note that not ALL of their
>>         experiences (or ours) are  best described as suffering. Your
>>         post clearly helps to explain why we tend to focus more on
>>         distressing experiences, since it is these, more than more
>>         positive ones, which call others into sympathetic action so
>>         they are more note-worthy. An unusually happy child is not
>>         likely to have a teaching assistant allocated to provide
>>         special support, nor to be seen by an educational psychologist
>>         but this does not mean that we should understand experience as
>>         suffering.
>>
>>         There is another can of worms around the relationships between
>>         emotions and the development of individualised identity but
>>         that may be for another thread!
>>
>>         All the best,
>>
>>         Rod
>>
>>         -----Original Message-----
>>         From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
>>         <mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>         [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
>>         <mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>] On Behalf Of Larry Purss
>>         Sent: 05 November 2011 12:46
>>         To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>         Subject: [xmca] Notions of suffering, enduring, undergoing
>>
>>         Hi Rod and Andy
>>
>>         Andy
>>         Thank you for the article on Dewey.  I thougt that article
>>         should remain the focus of that thread, but the question of
>>         the centrality of suffering to experience is also worth exploring.
>>
>>         Rod, you wrote
>>
>>          I am intrigued by the focus here, as in many of the postings
>>         on perezhivanie, on experience as 'suffering'. The etymology
>>         of 'suffer' (from 'sub' - under and 'ferre' - to bear) makes
>>         it a close cousin of 'undergo'
>>         and it is, I think, interesting that both terms have been used
>>         in ways which have moved their meaning towards the dark side.
>>
>>         Rod, you caution us not to impose our care-worn adult
>>         sufferings onto the experience of children who are more "care
>>         free".
>>
>>         In my work in schools I am called to respond to children who
>>         are experiencing what I will call "foul frustration" as an
>>         experience of what is not working.  This experience is often
>>         expressed as anger that is a passionate response to what is
>>         not working.  Infants also seem to express e-motions that may
>>         be understood as frustration for what is not working.
>>
>>         A developmental psychologist in Vancouver [Gordon Neufeld]
>>         sees development as biological and innate. Though his origin
>>         narrative I don't agree with, he does have an interesting
>>         perspective on how to respond to a childs foul frustration for
>>         what is not working.
>>
>>         He believes that a person must come to a place of "rest"
>>         before going in a new direction.  What is sometimes needed to
>>         move frustration from anger to experiencing saddness are for
>>         what is not working are "tears of futility".
>>         He suggests that these tears of futility are expressed within
>>         particular types of relational configurations that are safe,
>>         secure, and "attached".
>>
>>         When the tears of futility are met and "held" by the other
>>         this releases the frustration for what is not working and the
>>         child can lean into the other person and come to rest.  Often
>>         the child at this point is exhausted.  However, after coming
>>         to rest the child is now moved to exploration of the world and
>>         is care free and open to new experiences.
>>
>>         This idea of expressing "tears of futility" for what is not
>>         working [foul frustration] within intersubjective forms of
>>         caring and "holding" gives me a way to respond to expressions
>>         of "anger".  Suffering or enduring or undergoing can sometimes
>>         be an experienceof stuckness in patterns that are not working.
>>
>>         In summary
>>
>>         The ideal is for children to be care free but frustration is
>>         an inevitable aspect of becoming and e*motion.  If not met and
>>         "held" by others this frustration can lead to a stuckness that
>>         must be endured, and undergone.
>>         It is others who are central in channeling the path of
>>         frustration for what is not working.  Now I want to emphasize
>>         it is not "merely" intersubjective as the artifactual "worlds"
>>          mediating experience are the conditions which lead to
>>         frustration or being care free. Focusing on changing the
>>         conditions that lead to the frustration is also a central
>>         project but frustration is inevitable and unavoidable. When
>>         undergoing foul frustration how one is met within this
>>         experience is vital for how the child goes on.
>>
>>
>>         Larry
>>         Larry
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>>
>>
>>     --
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>     *Andy Blunden*
>>     Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1
>>     Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
>>     Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
>>     <http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
>>
>>     __________________________________________
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> *Robert Lake  Ed.D.
>> *Assistant Professor
>> Social Foundations of Education
>> Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
>> Georgia Southern University
>> P. O. Box 8144
>> Phone: (912) 478-5125
>> Fax: (912) 478-5382
>> Statesboro, GA  30460
>>
>>  /Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
>> midwife./
>> /-/John Dewey.
>>
>>
>
> -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Joint Editor MCA: 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
>
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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)
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