RE: Anti-topes and anti-chrons

From: Eugene Matusov (ematusov@udel.edu)
Date: Tue Jul 29 2003 - 19:58:48 PDT


Dear Ana and everybody-

 

Thanks, Ana, for discussion of Kurt Lewin. Can you please elaborate how
Lewin saw time and space being constructed (was time/space socially
constructed, culturally constructed, historically constructed or only
constructed by action and goal?)? Can you give examples, please?

 

Ana wrote, "To Kevin: Don't you think that Eugene's "garage episode" is
trully a dramatic chronotope in the real life? :-)"

 

Yes, it was a truly dramatic chronotope but more on crossover XMCA and my
family rather than institution. UD police could have opened the parking
garage if I were late. However, my family is much less understanding than
the UD police. :-) My son was waiting for me to read his story that he
developed after Dostoevsky while my wife wanted to share with me about new
Russian TV joke show.. In part I recovered from my transgression of being
late by calling from my car and talking with them on my cellular while I was
driving to make the chronotopic crossover less dramatic :-)

 

Eugene

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: anamshane@speakeasy.net [mailto:anamshane@speakeasy.net]
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 1:26 PM
To: xmca@ucsd.edu
Subject: Fwd: Anti-topes and anti-chrons

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: anamshane@speakeasy.net [mailto:anamshane@speakeasy.net]
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 03:31 PM
To: 'Mike Cole'
Subject: Re: Anti-topes and anti-chrons

Mike,

I have to renew my Barker knowledge beyond the text you sent. I remember
some of his research - "a day in life of a boy" -- following a particular
person throughout the whole day in their life and trying to record
everything. However, I don't remember much in greater detail that will allow
me fine tuning. Barker was highly influenced by Lewin's field theory and as
far as Lewin was concerned, time was a very important but also a totally
constructed dimension. In other worlds -- everyhting in the "past" or
"future" were just fields in the present life space: "fields" for Lewin were
a product of construction -- not the actual physical time/space. In other
word: there may exist a dynamic interplay between the actual fields in the
life-sace at any particular time -- but there is no possible interaction
between Time one and Time two. In effect he tried to keep the distinction
between physical time/space continuum.and psychological life-space composed
at any moment from various fields, some of which may "refer" to past and
others to future among other things.

We should also look up Vygotsky's critique of Lewin in "Language and
Thought" (somewhere in the opening chapters -- I don't have the book with me
at work). This was probably written after Lewin's visit to Moscow.

I don't know if you are familiar of the direct exchange between Lewin and
Vygotsky (both through their students and in person when Lewin visited
Vygotsky in Moscow in 1933). But my impression was always that there was a
real conceptual connection between the two -- although also a lot of
disagreements. I think that it was Vygotsky who pointed out the lack of
dynamics (read: time) in Lewin's concept of life space. At this moment I
don't know if Lewin's article about the role of time in life-space (it think
in the: "Dynamic theory of personality", but I'll look up the exact
reference tonight) was written after their meeting in Moscow or before.

Barker was definitively a "field theorist" -- and in that sense had a
connection to the same concepts we are playing with today. The multiplicity
of time scales both as different scopes to look at phenomena (phylogenetic,
ontogenetic, mesogenetic, microgenetic time scales) and as different
"contexts", "worlds", "chronotopes" or "synomorphs" is fascinating to me.
Just even conceptualizing them. One of my personal fascinations was always
the transition between across and between them and possible carry-overs. As
well as the management invested in their coordination -- for instance, "will
I forget to go and by vegetables for dinner while I am at work"??

To Kevin: Don't you think that Eugene's "garage episode" is trully a
dramatic chronotope in the real life? :-)

Ana

This was also meant for the whole list

Ana

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Cole [mailto:mcole@weber.ucsd.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 01:10 PM
To: anamshane@speakeasy.net
Subject: Re: Anti-topes and anti-chrons

Ana-- I interpret Barker as trying to establish relationships between
synomorphs. My impression, fromt he discussion, that time actually
less important in Barker than Bakhtin, but that may be selective reading
on my part.
mike



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