Martin:
I'm afraid I'm not going to defend fuzzy thinking. Not because I
don't agree
with it, but because I'm not very good at it. My fuzziness tends to
be of the
nonvolitional sort.
As I said, it's an aspect of Jay's work (and also Vygotsky's) I
haven't really
assimilated very well. For many years I've been trying to ENTIRELY
reorganize
the "present-practice-produce" paradigm of lessons here in Korea
along the
lines of his graphico-semiotic functions "getting attention--
presenting
information--checking integration".
It's a VERY powerful way of looking at lessons: it explains why
skilled
teachers NEVER begin with a blank slate, it puts information at the
centre of
the exchange where it really belongs, and it provides a model of
understanding
that is miles from testing practices: integrating old and new, me
and you, be
and do.
But I find it pretty hard to code stuff! Take this, for example, from
yesterday's introductory class:
a)"Hi!"
b) "I'm Mr. K."
c) "And you?"
Now, I'd like to say that a) is "getting attention", b) is "giving
information" and c) is some kind of "checking integration". I'd
like to go
further, and say that greetings and DOWN intonation are generally
a), indicative/declaratives with horizontal or UP-DOWN intonation are
generally b) and teacher questions often often UP intoned and c).
But the data won't code with any reliability Worse, I find there is
a) in b)
("I'm") and b) in a) ("Hi" gives information about how the speaker
envisions
the relationship), and c) in eveything (even the grammar).
Everything is
everything.
How nice it would be to shrug my shoulders like Hegel and say "So
much the
worse for the facts!" I would like to believe, as Benjamin says,
that "insight
into the relationship between essences is the prerogative of the
philosopher
and these relationships remain unaltered even if they do not take
on the
purest form in the world of fact." But I don't.
This is think one of Mariane Hedegaard's GREAT strengths (shown in
the
analysis of the Jens data but even more strongly at the end in her
analysis
of, and even her refusal to analyze, the Halime data) is her emic
(empathetic,
ethnomethodological) attitude towards what the subjects say. I
don't think
this is sentimentally motivated. I think it's a serious attempt
"not to laugh,
nor to cry, but to understand".
So she has to recognize that to an outsider (Jens, Halime) a
dominant culture
really DOES look pretty monological and monolithic, and in fact it
is, at
least in terms of its exclusiveness and inaccessibility. Given that
it is
categorical exclusiveness and inaccessibility that is the source of
this
apparent monolithicity, I think the idea that the categorial
thinking of the
oppressed and that of the oppressor have the same ontological basis
is simply
wrong.
Roy follows up his quotation of Benjamin with a long reference to
Malcolm X's
well known speech about "the house negro" and the "field negro",
recently
misquoted by Al Qaida's Al Zawahiri with respect to Barack Obama. His
argument, which I'm not sure I buy, is that BOTH are powerless, but
the field
negro is still strong, and part of that strength is a clear,
monolithic
distinction between master and slave.
But I am interfering with your time, Martin. Read Hedegaard--it's a
real
treat!
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
--- On Sun, 3/8/09, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Hedegaard article
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Sunday, March 8, 2009, 3:00 PM
I don't know, David. I haven't had time yet to read the Hedegaard
article,
so I can't put the remarks in that context. I presume you're not
proposing
that one ought to categorize Danish culture as pathologically
monological,
or nasty. I don't understand how that kind of appeal to "what we in
the
west... recognize" (which "we" is that, exactly?) can claim to
identify the
roots of a failure to think in "fuzzy" terms, not least, of course,
because
it's not exactly a fuzzy way of putting things.
Martin
On 3/8/09 12:20 AM, "David Kellogg" <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:
Dear Martin:
I don't find Jay's comments at all offensive, and they are
simplistic only in
the sense of being telegraphic (like the word "nasty"). Actually,
I find
Jay's
work anything but simplistic; if anything it's a little too
nuanced for my
purposes (coding data involves a LOT of categorial distinctions!)
I interpreted Jay's comments in the context of Mariane Hedegaard's
article,
particularly the ending, where Halime is describing her
relationship to the
Danish language and to the Danish "good life". I'm assuming that
this article
was written well after the Centre-Right Rasmussen government came
to power
(in
2001) with, of course, the support of the Bush administration,
which they
promptly returned by embroiling Denmark in the Iraq War.
What is not so well known is that the Rasmussen government is
supported by
the
Dansk Folkeparti of Pia Kjaersgaard, which is the equivalent of
Jean Marie Le
Pen's Front Nationale in France or Jurg Haidar's neo-fascist
Austrian
People's
Party. This party, which has been shown to be infilitrated by
terrorist
neo-Nazi organizations like Combat 18, opposes all forms of
immigration,
consider white people to be oppressed by the Muslim minority in
Denmark, and
after 9/11 Kjaersgaard said that the Americans were wrong to call
this a
clash
of civilizations because "There is only one civilization and that
is ours."
Here are some quotations from their parliamentary delegation, just
to give
you
some sense of what Halime is talking about:
Morten Messerschmidt, DPP member of Danish Parliament:
"I believe that all Muslim communities are, by definition, loser
communities.
The Muslims are not capable of critical thinking."[24]
Pia Kjærsgaard's newsletter (February 25, 2002):
"The Social Security Act is passé because it was tailored to a
Danish family
tradition and work ethic and not to Muslims, for whom it is fair
to be
provided for by others while the wife gives birth to a lot of
children. The
child benefit grant is being taken advantage of, as an immigrant
achieves a
record income due to [having] just under a score of children. New
punishment
limits must be introduced for group rapes because the problem only
arrived
with the vandalism of the many anti-social second-generation
immigrants."
[25]
It seems to me that in the USA in the sixties and again today
there was a
fairly common liberal sentiment to the effect that racism was
above all just
a
bad idea, and that since it was nothing more than a bad idea, it
could be
cured fairly easily by a dose of Sidney Poitier or Barack Obama.
The corollary of this sentiment is that, of course, the oppressed
must not be
allowed to cherish similar bad ideas, not merely because it might
provoke the
oppressor to even more savage acts of oppression but above all
because racism
is just a bad idea in general.
Well, it doesn't take much to show that this liberal sentiment is
simply
wrong. Sidney Poitier did not cure American racism, and neither
will Barack
Obama. The reason is simple; racism is not "just a bad idea" but,
like any
other pervasive and systematic ideology, a reflection of real
material
historical conditions.
Specifically, racism reflects the historical conditions of
American slavery,
European colonialism, and the not merely historical reserve army
of the
unemployed, which is growing by leaps and bounds as we speak.
Perhaps it's
time to consider the idea that so-called "reverse racism", or
rather, the
rage
of the oppressed, is really NOT part of the problem, but in fact
part of the
solution.
David Kirshner's colleague, Kaustuv Roy, has written a wonderful
book
(Thanks,
David!) called Neighborhoods of the Plantation which begins with a
quote
from Walter Benjamin on immigration and borders as a means of
keeping
"culture" pure. Benjamin committed suicide when, fleeing the
Nazis, he was
not
allowed to pass from occupied France into Spain :
"Where frontiers are decided the adversary is not simply
annihilated; indeed
he is accorded rights even when the victor's superiority of power is
complete.
And these are, in a demonically ambiguous way, 'equal rights', for
both
parties ot the treat it is the same line that may not be crossed.
Here
appears, in a terribly primitive form, the same mythical ambiguity
of laws
that may not be 'infringed' to which Anatole France refers
satirically when
he
says that 'Poor and rich are equally forbidden to spend the night
under
bridges.'"
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
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