Re: Faustian progressivism?

Mary Bryson (brys who-is-at unixg.ubc.ca)
Mon, 8 Mar 1999 16:32:22 -0700

>On the epistemological side, we can safely say, I think, that we learn
>about our relationships to people and things through our co-participation
>with them in activity. But is it also necessary, or even necessarily
>desirable that we take an initiating or active-agentive role in this
>participation in order to learn? that we push and probe?

I have been thinking a great deal lately about the relevance of Grice's
maxims about communication, and also Habermas vis a vis the "research"
scenario. It seems to me that people (gross generalization) are intentional
creatures, and that to stand back and adopt some kind of non-intentional
pose while "co-participating" in a research context is just, well, weird.
And I think that the right to non-action in that form represents as kind of
insidious priviledge that, a la Foucault, pushes power relations into the
backdrop. The "fly on th wall" ethnographer pose. Oscar Wilde wrote that:
"Being natural is the most irritating pose I know". And I think that the
only good reason to be in a research scene is with some kind of intention,
which, of necessity, involves change -- interpreted as "activity". That to
understand something one needs to be immersed in activity precisely becasue
as a researcher you are then foreclosed from the possibility of having
"understood" something simply by "looking" or by asking children dumb
questions of the "more flowers or roses" variety.

Mary

Mary Bryson, Associate Professor and UBC Scholar 98/99,
Faculty of Education, UBC
Principal Co-Investigator: GenTech Project

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