Re: Personal mails, practice and identity in XMCA

Judy Diamondstone (diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu)
18 Sep 1999 18:41:45 -0000

Hmmmm. Thank you Bill for the compliment on an old message... Have I been
exceedingly murky lately? --- Where did mimesis come from, anyway? (where
was I coming from?) Actually, we've discussed mimesis here, but it seems the
thread began during months that are missing from the archives. If you know
differently, Eva, I'd appreciate a reference.

How did affect slide into mimesis? Actually, I've been trying to think about
what gets 'left out' of a model of object-oriented activity, especially
semiotic activity. I was also in the middle of Eva's paper at the time, so I
was not aware of the way she accounted for the simultaneity of the 3 systems
she defined in x-list CMC. So, thinking about my own recurrent difficulties
'speaking up' here, and the premium placed on multilogical messaging, and
the analytical separation of community-building and multilogue, I was
pleased to hear from Victoria that she values/ responds more readily to the
personal messaging that leaks through/ announces itself than to the
primarily knowledge-building messages. I think these -- the 'personal', the
recognizable presence behind the words -- may be especially important to
some of us for gaining access to participant status in a multilogue.

Thanks to Bill P. for his very unmurky mention of inter-related issues of
addressivity/ identity/ & community. Addressivity invokes for me the mimetic
aspect of semiosis -- identity-building always in response to the other. So
the email medium / tool certainly does offer some interesting and
problematic possibilities....

Victoria's message has just appeared, so I'll stop here...

Judith

Judith Diamondstone (732) 932-7496 Ext. 352
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183