power and play

BPenuel who-is-at aol.com
Sat, 2 Mar 1996 16:46:14 -0500

Judy writes that perhaps

"we should pay attention to the Heyoka-like
effects of certain interactions, in certain activity settings. Kris Guttierez
identifies the "3rd space" in classrooms, where official (teacher-controlled)
scripts and counter (student-controlled) scripts intermingle. Maybe
performing the alternative path against social gravity needs such a "3rd
space" or maybe we should ask how "3rd spaces"
can be deliberately framed."

I think this is a really fruitful line of inquiry, and I would predict that
we could observe these kinds of 3rd spaces going on in most joint activity.
Insofar as people bring different purposes to activity and different ones
emerge for participants, there will always be available this difference or
"intermingling" of power/resistance as a resource for a Heyoka-figure or
anyone else to draw from to transform activity.

I've been going back and reading some of Mike Cole's work on the 5th
Dimension in thinking about the kinds of activity settings I work in, namely
after-school programs. He discusses this setting as a "mixed" activity
setting, where adult purposes and adult-generated activities (aimed at
instruction, promoting learning) and youth purposes and participation (often
with fun being the leading activity) co-mingle. I see that elsewhere in some
of the Girl Scout meetings I observe, to the point that we might say that
while participants are well-coordinated and "pull off performances", it's
almost as if they're not at all doing the "same" thing.

I know several people here on this list have written on this kind of
phenomenon, but in this context, cultivating 3rd spaces involves developing a
meta-stance toward these differing reasons for participation, reversing
perspectives (exchanging student for teacher, youth participant for adults),
or even our own theorizing and observation as an activity and presenting that
back to the group. In some respects, though, the possibility is always there
in joint activity, it doesn't always happen that it "comes to light" and
crucially depends on taking the approach (analytic or playful) that Judy's
talking about.

Bill Penuel
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PreventionInventions
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