Re: levels

From: Bill Barowy (wbarowy@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Jul 06 2001 - 07:40:37 PDT


Ana,

I get the impression that references are always contingent to the dialogue,
perhaps more generally written "always contingent to the action". This makes
sense in that to achieve the normative 'symbolic', by what is meant by
'normative', each person in a collective references the same (identical) thing.
 One might respond that it begs the question how each individual, having a
unique ontogenetic trajectory, can determine and agree on what is the same in
what each of them means. Perhaps it is not possible, except that we pretend we
know what each other means when acting and communicating. We act as if we
agree on meanings -- taking culture for granted. When the actions and
communications of another are discordant with what we believe, we react with
what is in our toolbox of "discordance strategies" (of which many have been
enacted through xmca).

What I think this view of indexical-->symbolic progression is that it is
necessary to look at ontogenetic and "mesogenetic" development simultaneously.
But ultimately it would seem that what is symbolic is in essence what indexes
people readily agree upon, and this is shaped by their history of
co-development, which occurs as they participate jointly in activity. The
collective movement towards tacit (and explicit) agreement, occurs not only
through episodes of discordance (perhaps like cybernetic error functions,
disagreement and tension but also puzzlement, curiousity, wonderment), and so
also creatively.

I seem to recall a video of children playing in a (pretend) kitchen that goes
with the text "the development of children" in which children negotiate their
roles and rules and who can do what.

Will be lurking for the next few days -- other things are pressing.

bb

> A HUGE JUMP! Two jumps - indeed. One between the "indexical" (pointing to
> something contingent to the dialogue) and "symbolic" ( pointing to
> something outside this space and time).

=====
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]

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