Perhaps Judy can say more about the Japanese stance toward
relationships, and playing with yielding and cooperative stances
(which are also ways out of discourse impasses). (see separate
note on Angel's Japanese cartoons)
Rolfe recounts still another way out of impasse: minority action
that can, like force, change the conditions of discourse and
activity. I think this point makes some progress with the initial
suggestion. It is not just fisticuffs that can break a discourse
deadlock, but any direct material action that changes the
ecological conditions of the activity context of the discursive
dispute, e.g. rendering it 'moot' or creating a new activity
which requires a different set of discourse stances (even if
these still retain elements of the prior, conflicting discourse
formations and atttitudes, ideologies, principles, etc.)
So in his example -- and I recall the same phenomenon among
similar people in similar circumstances at the same period at U
of Chicago -- once the minority takes to the streets, or begins a
guerilla theatre 'action', simple discourse on the part of an
opposed faction is no longer appropriate in the new activity
ecology. Discourse no doubt will still play a role, but now a
role in a different 'drama', where the scene is set as much or
more by non-discursive modes of action and meaning-making. What
the formerly 'opposed' faction was opposed to was some
proposition or some proposal -- a purely discursive phenomenon,
opposed by counter-discourse. Now the role of discourse changes,
in Halliday's terms, from language-for-reflection to language-in-
action (with many attendant shifts in semantics and grammar);
there is a difference in the nature of the semiotic mediation or
'doubling', a difference in how the verbal and nonverbal aspects
of action articulate with one another.
For my original purposes, what is important, then, is that the
new activity frame, through its material conditioning of further
appropriate or effective activity (including discourse) advances
us past the impasse (without necessarily 'resolving' it in its
own terms).
This broader view of direct material action to get past the
impasse also takes us away from the narrower fascistic
oversimplification that one needs to use force to get past mere
talk, and perhaps from the equally simplistic opposition of power
and reason. In a more integrated ecological-semiotic view,
reasoning is a reflection on actual and possible actions, setting
up and judging alternatives within an existing ecological
context. Power resides in actions that change that context.
Discourse can itself change the context in some cases (for
example by reconstructing values, alliances, attitudes among co-
present participants), but still leaves many ecological features
invariant. When an impasse is reached under these conditions,
only something which can change those other ecological features,
i.e. direct material action on them, has the power to allow both
activity and discourse to move beyond the impasse. JAY.
PS. We are still left with plenty of unresolved questions about
the relation of the play-stance, and other 'meta' stances to
activity, to this dialectic of discourse and more direct material
action. More thoughts?
------------
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU