>We so cherish the idea that we have something called free will and that this
>is an individual quality.
Paul, thanks for your thoughtful response (especially because it is the
only response so far to questions addressed to others besides you - now
what does THIS exemplify in current xmca-land?) My messages have been
somewhat less thoughtful, but they stand for genuine, if not well-phrased,
questions. Actually, i don't think of will (or desire) as an individual
quality. Will (and desire -- the 2 are intimately linked, aren't they?) are
inherently social phenomena, artifactually constructed.
The Bergson example of "peak experiences" is worth returning to, & I plan
to pick it up again, but first let me ask how it differs from Cz*** 's
"flow" experience, which can be experienced by a writer or artist or
individual engaged in any social practice. I am not alone in presuming that
an individual's participation in a new (to him or her) discourse depends on
that person's taking up a different social identity. You apparently object
to a Discourse about multiple Discourses. The problem, as I understand it,
spans "levels" of social reality. There are politics among groups played
out on a big societal stage and micropolitics that occur on the same
societal stage, but played out in temporally more fleeting, but not
ineffectual over the long haul, terms.
If Cz***k's "flow" experience is not substantively different from Bergson's
"peak" experiences then B's example of course needs some qualification, but
the collective pleasure of subjects engaged in collective resistance to
some dominant practice is still worth getting back to.
you wrote:
>A basic rethinking of our
>concept of "will" might lead to a much more fruitful way of thinking about
>co-construction,
=- with this I completely agree, but I do not agree that the objective, the
ideal, is/ can be understood (formulated; dare I say "constructed"?) from a
universal perspective. will & desire (which govern subjectivity, whether
individual or collective, no?) may be opposed to "the ideal" but what
counts as will, what one desires, varies across social groups, as does "the
ideal" which is defined in contrast to that which is "ONLY subjective"
Well, I sense that I have not said what I want to say, but I've spent too
long on email already. I look forward to some help in the worrying of these
distinctions.
judy
Bergson, a philosopher about as far removed from
>Marxism as one can get, considered that the true exercise of whatever might
>be called will occurred very rarely and only in moments in which the
>mechanical temporality -- the temporality characteristic of mechanical
>behavior, conditioned responses-- occurred only during rare peak
>experiences.. These peak experiences in which individuals experience a
>sense of deep, free exercise of will, if we examine them closely, tend to
>occur in times of social movements when entire systems of social
>representation (idealities) are on the block and people recognize that their
>"choices" make a big difference, and usually involve a sacrifice, a
>renunciation of an entire set of possibilities and another a social
>personality that is bound up with adhering to and fitting within systems of
>social representation tied to very concrete social relationships granting
>access to the products of the social division of labor in its specific,
>class-structured patterns of distribution.
>
>One might well talk of "the illusion of will". A basic rethinking of our
>concept of "will" might lead to a much more fruitful way of thinking about
>co-construction, the model that seems to be somewhere not too far beneath
>the surface of the difficulties that several participants are feeling about
>the implications of Ilyenkov's proposals.
>
>Well the sun is shining and I'm going to enjoy it but will more carefully
>look at this fascinating (and well-mannered) thread tonight since so much
>ground has been covered and really deserves fully thought out responses.
>
>Paul H. Dillon
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Oct 01 2000 - 01:00:46 PDT