Mike,
I don't think that everyday events are dramatic performances of all
involved. The biggest difference is that in everyday events things
happen in every which way -- sometimes under the control of a person,
sometimes partially under the control but most of the time not. And
although many things quickly become predictable (synomorphs of
particular activities like: bakery shop, lunch, a class of math, going
to picnic, etc.), there is a degree of haphasardness (sp?) and
irrelevance. By that I think of the myriad of stimuli we are exposed to
which, while they are a part of our life, are not relevant to the same
degree. In that sense you could say that they are meaningless, or
un-engaging, just drifting by... They amy have a very important impact
on our lives - but at the time that they are occurring, we don't know
and don't pay attention to them. In other words, they are not all part
of our chronotopes or synomorphs, part of our "life space" (Lewin).
In that sense, analyzing everyday life is much harder and much more
unpredictable than analyzing literature.
Literature (drama) is already a distilled material, an intentional
presentation of a life - with various chronotopes/synomorphs/life space
fields - which, taken together, represent a MODEL, a chronotope itself.
As Vygotsky himself showed in the analysis of Hamlet, one cannot only
ask questions regarding Hamlet's feelings and motivations, but one must
ask the question WHY did the author place that here and what is
Shakespeare telling us through this particular scene. So the discussion
(popular at that and later times) about Hamlet as an indecisive person,
or why does it take him so much to make a decision, should really be
about what is Shakespeare (and of course, directors, actors, involved in
a real particular production) telling us.
We don't get that MODEL ready-made from everyday life of someone, we
have to construct it -- the model, the chronotope itself , in a similar
way that the person (or a group of people) have to construct it for
themselves.
Now, you call it a "dramatic metaphor , but I rather think that it is
not a metaphor in a sense of "life is a drama" -- but that the notion of
"chronotope" a very precise tool for construction of space/time/meaning
out of a "mess" of details of someone's everyday life.
What do you think?
Ana
Mike Cole wrote:
>Eugene-- Aren't every day events dramatic performances of all involved? I
>know we can make distinctions -- participating in a national spelling bee
>is not doing your homework-- but the dramatic metaphor seems a powerful
>conceptual tool quite generally.
>
>I find it fascinating that Bakhtin is used by many to bridge between
>Vygotskian dyadic events and larger social context when Bakhtin's materials
>are drawn so largely from literature while so many of us study "texts" that
>are constructed before our eyes. The nature of the data must influence
>the analysis, but the topic is often not addressed. The use of literary
>material in LSV's writings has had a powerful effect on me. It was considered
>absolutely inappropriate by the people with whom I studied.
>mike
>
>
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Aug 01 2003 - 01:00:09 PDT