[Xmca-l] Re: Ventriloquation re-ducks

Andy Blunden ablunden@mira.net
Thu Dec 19 15:23:24 PST 2013


I presume Larry is alluding to "mythos" in the Aristotlean sense which 
we nowadays call "narrative" and "logos" in the sense we now call 
"conceptual". So I took Larry's comment as related to connections 
between the narrative and conceptual knowledge, which can make claim to 
be moving to the concrete in the same sense that ideographic relates to 
nomothetic science. Is that the same as Aritotlean vs Galilean? I'm not 
sure.

Did I get that right, Larry?
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.mira.net/~andy/


mike cole wrote:
> Hi Larry-- Shifting relations between logos and mythos is rising to the
> concrete for you!? Far out!!
>
>
> For me a concrete case would be the way that adults seek to get kids to
> take on more logos by embedding
> "logistic" moments in computer games that are organized around myths that
> enable kids to make sense of the
> logocentric tradition as means for dealing with (always partially mythic!)
> world. Teaching everyone to how to open zones of care seems like a really
> interesting way to think about development..... until the orcs appear.
>
> Come ot think of it, a computer game of hobbits and orcs that taught the
> calculus as a side product would make a great xmas present for the learning
> sciences!
> :-)
> mike
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 11:42 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> Mike,
>> Moving to the concrete, recently I have been tracing the shifting
>> relations of the contrasting genres of muthos [myth] and
>> logos [rationality] and the polyphonic ways these genres have played out as
>> particular understandings. However, what is fascinating is the way these
>> genres interweave throughout different epochs and either muthos or logos
>> can be in the ascending position.
>> To give one example, Hayden White explores the shifting understandings of
>> the relation of *the social* with *the cultural* as differing ways of
>> orienting to logos. Hayden wrote;
>>
>> "In many respects both Marxist and Western academic social science
>> regarded a pre - or unscientific human consciousness as the principal cause
>> of the problems that a genuinely scientific study of society and its
>> processes would ultimately solve. Much like the Freud of *Civilization and
>> its Discontents*, Marxist and Western academic social science agreed that a
>> *civilization* undomesticated and undisciplined by scientific knowledge of
>> human nature, society, and culture was the cause of the peculiar
>> *discontents* of a specifically *modern* society. From this ASSUMPTION
>> arose the desire informing both of these social sciences to *reduce*
>> culture to the status of an epiphenomenon of processes - specifically
>> social processes - which because they were intrinsically grounded in
>> humanity's relations with the material world and inherently utilitarian or
>> aim-oriented in their motivation, could be construed AS RATIONAL.in their
>> articulation and therefore submissible to the ministrations of
>> scientifically DERIVED twchniques of manipulation, education, and
>> disciplination in a way that culture, conceived as *play*, *values*,
>> *superstition*, *art*, *religion* and the like, was not." [in "Beyond the
>> Cultural Turn", 1999,  where Hayden White wrote the afterword to this
>> edited text]
>>
>> This is one fragment, and he goes on to also articulate the shift towards
>> the mythic voice in the ascendence. The multivoiced theme is left ambiguous
>> and there is always *excess* beyond either muthos or logos. It is the
>> *ambiguity* and *ambivalence* that seems central.
>>
>> Mike, as I *read* Hayden above, I experience a type of ventriloquation of
>> the interweaving of muthos and logos though historical epochs.  In the
>> above quote, Hayden is expressing a genre which expresses logos in the
>> ascendence and muthos is in a supporting role.
>> However, logos does not have the last word and other voices enter and
>> exit center stage. As I *read* narratives which trace the emergence of
>> different *genres* [concepts] it seems that the concept of *venting* may be
>> appropriate as a way of expressing the interweaving voices across the ages
>> that we hear in our current reflections. The multivoiced expressions of our
>> internal and external *talk* seems to reverberate across multiple time
>> scales. However in each *turn* also is a *return* and this also can be
>> traced through human *development.
>>
>> Larry
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 10:23 AM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Larry--  The etymological research was Eugene, not me. Sorry if my
>>> summarizing was inaccurate on who said what.
>>>
>>> I assume there are a great many varieties and modes of ventriloquation
>>> that can be characterized the various terms you propose. In every case
>>> under consideration its clearly important to identify the communication in
>>> such terms to be relevant...... gotta rise to the concrete, and in doing
>>> so, to fill out the concept in as much detail as the conclusions you want
>>> to reach seem to require.
>>>  mike
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 4:08 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Thanks, Mike.
>>>>
>>>> The exploration of voice *as* ventrilocation projected within
>>>> puppets circulating around persons and personas in character are using
>>>> metaphors of the stage and theater. [all life is a stage]
>>>>
>>>> I wonder more about the notion of  the types of genres AND tropes within
>>>> which the persona and masks are actually expressed.
>>>> I hear more the question of *voicedness* and *multivoicided* expressed
>>>> within multiple *traditions* [genres, tropes] and it is not merely our
>>>> personal voices being generated, but the actual *traditions* speaking
>>>> through us given voices which
>>>> , are *returning to the conversation. I wonder how often it is NOT the
>>>> puppets ventriloquating as it is our  anscestors speaking?
>>>> The question *who* is doing the speaking is a deeply complex question.
>>>> Yes our voices can speak as *intra* voices, they can speak as inner and
>>>> outer voices, they can speak as outer voices but returning to the
>>>> discussion of play and playworlds, our are voices also expressed within
>>>> *worlds* emerging in our conversations.
>>>>
>>>> I would like to introduce a notion of*generous* readers and *generous
>>>> listeners* who in their interactions with interlocutors are also
>>>> participating with ancestors [and traditions, genres, tropes]. Generous and
>>>> generativity as reading that OPENS ZONES OR CLEARINGS of *care*.
>>>>
>>>> I have been using the *concept* ventriloquation to express the truth
>>>> that we are all *crows* who steal each others egg words and fill them with
>>>> our own *meanings* and *sense*[David K's metaphor].
>>>> As Mike showed in the etymology of the word *ventriloquation* there are
>>>> many crows.  However these egg words when transformed [translated] are also
>>>> expressing particular *traditions* within which the newly filled egg word
>>>> makes sense.
>>>>
>>>> Ventriloquintation as an egg word is not making puppets or masks speak.
>>>> I wonder if it is more constitutive a process that develop how *I* speak.
>>>> This notion of 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person *voice* as
>>>> constituting new forms of *character formation [and new forms of
>>>> socioability.
>>>>
>>>> I'll pause
>>>> Larry
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>       
>
>   



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