[Xmca-l] Re: poverty/class
Greg Thompson
greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
Mon Mar 24 23:37:42 PDT 2014
Andy,
sorry for the delayed response. Like David, I think you've read my post
against my intentions. My point was to locate Hegel and Bakhtin together so
as to suggest that neither Bakhtin nor Hegel were childist. Quite the
opposite.
Still catching up.
-greg
On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 5:44 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> Well, Hegel says very little about recognition in his mature works, and I
> sort of doubt that Bakhtin studied the works of the Young Hegel and was
> "influenced" or "inflected" by them, but I don't know much about Bakhtin.
>
> But I really don't know how you can connect Hegel's theory of subjectivity
> to "childism" I really don't. Are yo ureferring to the Logic, or what he
> has to say about education in the Philosophy of Right, or his Psychology in
> the Philosophy of Spirit? One of the bees Hegel had in his bonnet was the
> fad (as he saw it) for wanting children to "think for themselves". Hegel
> thought this was liberal silliness. What passage of Hegel gave you this
> impression, Greg?
>
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.mira.net/~andy/
>
>
> Greg Thompson wrote:
>
>> Andy,
>>
>> I fear that you are going to discover that I'm really a one trick pony...
>>
>> I read Bakhtin's notion of "consummation" as being inflected by Hegel's
>> concept of recognition (it isn't exactly the same but the parallels are
>> striking - one is consummated by the gaze of the other).
>> And I think the Hegel's theory of subjectivity is fundamentally contrary
>> to the childist theory of subjectivity which is more Kantian to my mind (I
>> fear that may take a lot of explaining, but I'll leave it at that for now).
>>
>> I'd love to hear more from David about what he thinks the consequences
>> are of taking on a childist approach. What is lost in that approach? And
>> similarly, what is gained by taking a more Vygotskian approach?
>> -greg
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 2:10 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:
>> ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>
>> why do you say "pace Hegel" Greg?
>>
>> andy
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> ------------
>> *Andy Blunden*
>> http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
>>
>>
>>
>> Greg Thompson wrote:
>>
>> David,
>> Yes, you caught what I was saying in your parenthetical. My
>> point was that
>> Vera nicely lays out and critiques the dominant view of
>> creativity - i.e.
>> the one where creativity is anti-social.
>>
>> And I'd add that in my reading of Bakhtin, I have difficulty
>> imagining him
>> as a childist, not because of his disdain for children (a
>> topic of which I
>> had no knowledge prior to your post), but because I see him as
>> drawing on a
>> different understanding of human subjectivity - one that draws
>> from a
>> tradition that is not about the intrinsic flowering of the
>> individual but
>> rather is about the imbricated emergence of an individual who
>> is shot
>> through / consummated by others. (pace Hegel, imho).
>>
>> -greg
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 1:00 AM, David Kellogg
>> <dkellogg60@gmail.com <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Greg--
>>
>> Actually, I think of Vera's work as precisely the opposite
>> of an
>> anti-social theory of creativity (but perhaps that is just
>> what you
>> meant to say?). Vera's work on creative collaborations,
>> for example,
>> stresses that in and alongside every famous creative voice
>> there is at
>> least one and probably many more equally creative voices.
>> It seems so
>> obvious to me, when I read Tolstoy, that I am really
>> hearing the voice
>> of his wife, and not just when the female characters
>> speak; I cannot
>> be surprised that nothing he wrote after the crackup of
>> his marriage
>> measures up to War and Peace or Anna K. Of course, the
>> social medium
>> of art cannot be reduced to the interpersonal in this way;
>> but I think
>> Vera would say that the tragedy of our artists is that it
>> often must
>> be.
>>
>> Actually, reading over what I wrote, I discovered with
>> some chagrin
>> that, your kind comments to the contrary notwithstanding,
>> it is not
>> particularly well framed. As usual, I have left far too
>> much daylight
>> between the mounting and the canvas. The Halliday quote fits
>> reasonably well but that is mostly thanks to him not me.
>> But I meant
>> to say that Bakhtin's ideas were being portrayed at the
>> conference as
>> being thoroughly "childist" and this childism was,
>> according to many
>> speakers (e.g. Eugene Matusov, Ana Marjanovic-Shane and
>> others) what
>> made Bakhtin preferable to Vygotsky (even though everybody
>> has now
>> admitted that Bakhtin was, personally, a bit of a
>> scoundrel, not least
>> for the way he treated HIS partners in dialogue,
>> Voloshinov and
>> Medvedev).
>>
>> This I found inexplicable. How can anyone read Bakhtin
>> (who appears to
>> have loathed children and who certainly wrote that child's
>> play had
>> neither a moral nor an aesthetic dimension) as a childist?
>> But the
>> comments of Mike and Andy, on how creativity is being set
>> out as a
>> kind of "Weak Utopianism" (to quote Michael Gardiner's
>> phrase), make a
>> certain sense of this nonsense. The collapse of the USSR
>> is to be
>> taken as a collapse of the cultural-historical in
>> psychology as well.
>> Henceforth, the social is to be reduced to the
>> interpersonal, and the
>> creative society to the clever society of one.
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>>
>>
>> On 23 March 2014 14:29, Greg Thompson
>> <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
>> <mailto:greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> David,
>> Loved your framing of this as "Anti-social
>> creativity". This is the model
>> of creativity in much of the West! (cf. Vera
>> John-Steiner's work). It's
>> everywhere. Read that biography of Steve Jobs - wait,
>> no don't do that...
>>
>> Also, fascinating (and sad) to hear about how
>> capitalism is wrenching
>>
>> older
>>
>> workers in Korea. Sounds to me like "Abstract labor"
>> concretized! (i.e.,
>> here is the concrete manifestation of "abstract labor"
>> - labor viewed in
>> the abstract - one worker is as good as another
>> regardless of who that
>> laborer is).
>>
>> Nothing is sacred with capitalism, seems another
>> "Chinese wall" is
>> crumbling under the weighty flow of global capital...
>>
>> Very sad (and I suspect that those older workers never
>> knew what hit
>>
>> them -
>>
>> they certainly didn't expect it).
>> -greg
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 3:52 PM, David Kellogg
>> <dkellogg60@gmail.com <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>>
>>
>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> As you probably know, Korea is currently run by
>> the neomilitaristic
>> scion of the previous dictator, who took power in
>> a transparently
>> rigged election. No, I don't mean that Korea--I
>> mean this one.
>>
>> Park Geunhye, the daughter of our former dictator
>> Park Cheonghi, came
>> to power about a year ago, first by stealing the
>> opposition's clothes
>> (to be fair, they made it very easy for her by
>> having such a very
>> unambitious programme to begin with). The National
>> Intelligence
>> Service then flooded the country with highly
>> creative Tweets alleging
>> that her opponents were soft on communism, one of
>> those new
>> mobilizations of social media that you may not
>> have heard so much
>> about.
>>
>> Anyway, to make a short story long, having stolen
>> the opposition's
>> clothes, she is now obliged to renege on her
>> promises in the interests
>> of those who financed her campaign. Now, part of
>> this involves
>> reneging on a massive programme of social welfare
>> that Koreans
>> desperately wanted (they deposed the mayor of
>> Seoul in the interests
>> of keeping a free lunch programme, for example).
>> But surely, one must
>> put something in the place of a promise of
>> pensions, job creation
>> schemes, minimum wage, etc, mustn't one?
>>
>> No, not really--all you have to do is babble and
>> blather about a new
>> "creativity-driven economy". The "creativity
>> driven economy" is a
>> pleasant way of referring to a highly unpleasant
>> fact of life. In
>> South Korea, where we nominally respect the
>> elderly (and we certainly
>> pay them more than the young) it soon becomes
>> cheaper to employ four
>> or five young people rather than one older one.
>> This means,
>> necessarily, booting out older workers around age
>> fifty and hiring
>> younger ones to replace them. The older workers
>> (and, for that atter,
>> younger ones who cannot find unemployment) are
>> then given a little
>> handout and encouraged to "create" their own jobs.
>>
>> Of course, for this to work (as a scam, I mean,
>> it's obviously a
>> non-starter as a social welfare scheme), one
>> really has to try to
>> inculcate the kind of "every man for himself"
>> mentality that people
>> have in other countries, and that is really a bit
>> of a poser in a
>> country which, although highly stratified
>> socially, is still very
>> collectivistic culturally. That is where education
>> comes in.
>>
>> Consider the folllowing quotation from Halliday
>> (2004, the Language of
>> Early Childhood, p. 251):
>>
>> "Much of the discussion of chlidren's language
>> development in the last
>> quarter of a century (Halliday is writing in
>> 1991--DK), especially in
>> educational contexts, has been permeated by a
>> particular ideological
>> construction of childhood. This view combines
>> individualism,
>> romanticism, and what Martin calls 'childism', the
>> Disneyfied vision
>> of a child that is constructed in the media and in
>> certain kinds of
>> kiddielit. Each child is presented as a
>> freestanding, autonomous
>> being; and learning consists in releasing and
>> brining into flower the
>> latent awareness that is already there in the bud.
>> This is the view
>> that was embodied in the 'creativity' and
>> 'personal growth' models of
>> education by James Britton, John Dixon, and David
>> Holbrook in Great
>> Britain; and more recently, from another
>> standpoint, in the United
>> States in Donald Graves' conception of chldren's
>> writing as process
>> and of their texts as property to be individually
>> owned. It has been
>> supported theoretically first by Chomskyaninnatism
>> and latterly by
>> cognitive science models which interpret learning
>> as the acquisition
>> of ready0made information by some kind of
>> independent process device."
>> (I omit Halliday's references).
>>
>> My wife and I recently attended the Dialogic
>> Pedagogy conference on
>> Bakhtin in New Zealand where these "childist"
>> ideas were very much in
>> evidence, and where they were explicitly opposed
>> to Vygotskyan ones!
>> At first I found this opposition rather bizarre,
>> not least because I
>> had recently reviewed an excellent piece of work
>> by our own
>> Wolff-Michael Roth for the Dialogic Pedagogy
>> Journal. Roth's piece,
>> which you can read in the DPJ archive, had argued
>> for the
>> compatibility of Bakhtin and Vygotsky (on
>> theoretical grounds it is
>> true). There was also a very fine presentation by
>> Michael Gardiner on
>> Bakhtin, the autonomists, and the 99/1% discourse
>> surrounding the
>> Occupy movement.
>>
>> Now I am starting to understand a little better.
>> There is, actually, a
>> model of creativity out there which is
>> individualistic,
>> entrepreneurial, anti-socialist, and even
>> anti-social. The problem is,
>> it's also anti-creativity.
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.
>>
>> On 23 March 2014 04:26, Larry Purss
>> <lpscholar2@gmail.com
>> <mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Andy,
>> Your comment:
>>
>> "Avram, I am not convinced that creating
>> niche economies can in any
>>
>> way
>>
>> ameliorate the domination of big capital. We
>> have to find a way to
>> penetrate and subvert the sources of
>> capitalist exploitation, rather
>>
>> than
>>
>> offering "alternatives,"
>>
>> suggests there may be ways to potentially
>> penetrate and subvert "at
>>
>> the
>>
>> source" rather than act to *create* alternatives.
>>
>> I have wondered if my utopian sympathies
>> which show my curiosity with
>> exploring *alternatives* can be viewed as
>> *living experiments* or
>>
>> *living
>>
>> laboratories* where alternative life styles
>> and attitudes are
>>
>> generated
>>
>> and
>>
>> lived.
>> It must be my personal experiences with
>> *alternate communities* which
>>
>> have
>>
>> attempted to actualize their ideal
>> alternatives. I must admit, most of
>> these experiments are failures. However
>> Cultural Historical Theory
>> developed in an *alternate setting* and Dewey
>> and Mead in Chicago
>>
>> gathered
>>
>> together a committed group with shared ideals.
>>
>> In order to penetrate capitalism *at its
>> source* may require
>>
>> demonstrating
>>
>> other ways of life as experiments which
>> express other *values*. Some
>>
>> of
>>
>> these alternative approaches will include
>> *alternative community*.
>>
>> The current discussion on the drift of
>> *university departments*
>> suggests alternative forms of gathering may
>> need to come into
>>
>> existence
>>
>> to
>>
>> express alternative *values* However I also
>> accept this *hope* may be
>>
>> naïve
>>
>> and not grounded in recognition of the depth
>> of capitalist ideology
>>
>> which
>>
>> co-ops ALL utopian ideals. Therefore the
>> requirement to subvert the
>> *source*?
>>
>> To once again return to Alex Kozulin's book
>> which is expressing a
>>
>> theme.
>>
>> He is exploring the *double-faceted* nature
>> of consciousness and
>>
>> suggests
>>
>> the
>>
>> "interpretive or metacognitive function
>> [aspect?] of consciousness may
>>
>> have
>>
>> an AUTONOMY from REGULATIVE AND CONTROLLING
>> functions.
>>
>> I wonder if this *autonomy* can extend to
>> *alternative communities*
>>
>> forming
>>
>> to express alternative *values*?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 7:50 PM, Andy Blunden
>> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
>>
>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> One of the themes of the correlation you
>> mention, Mike, is the focus
>>
>> on
>>
>> "the creative industries." There are
>> theories about the way cities
>>
>> can
>>
>> escape from their rust-bucket depression
>> by promoting "the creative
>> industries." These include software
>> development (e.g. computer
>>
>> games),
>>
>> advertising, packaging and fashion. That's
>> probably fine for urban
>>
>> renewal,
>>
>> except for the artists who get booted out
>> of their old warehouses
>>
>> which
>>
>> get
>>
>> done up for the expected "creative
>> industries," but where it's has a
>>
>> big
>>
>> negative impact in the academy is in the
>> "critical sciences." People
>> involved in social and political criticism
>> are suddenly faced with
>> imperatives to serve the "creative
>> industries." So feminist,
>>
>> philosophical
>>
>> and political critiques, which were
>> surviving by a thread, now have
>>
>> to
>>
>> educate software makers who are building
>> computer games or artists
>>
>> who
>>
>> are
>>
>> designing advertisements all in the name
>> of needing to support the
>> "creative industries."
>>
>> Avram, I am not convinced that creating
>> niche economies can in any
>>
>> way
>>
>> ameliorate the domination of big capital.
>> We have to find a way to
>> penetrate and subvert the sources of
>> capitalist exploitation, rather
>>
>> than
>>
>> offering "alternatives," I think.
>> Capitalism can do perfectly well
>>
>> without
>>
>> a certain percentage of the world's
>> population who find an
>>
>> "alternative".
>>
>> Andy
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> ------------
>>
>> *Andy Blunden*
>> http://home.mira.net/~andy/
>> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
>>
>>
>> mike cole wrote:
>>
>>
>> So my noticing of the fascination and
>> promotion of "culture and
>> creativity" discourse, design schools,
>> and neoliberalism may be more
>>
>> than a
>>
>> symptom of failing eyesight?
>> Mike
>>
>> On Friday, March 21, 2014, Avram Rips
>> <arips@optonline.net
>> <mailto:arips@optonline.net> <mailto:
>>
>> arips@optonline.net
>> <mailto:arips@optonline.net>>> wrote:
>>
>> The problem is the connection
>> between people alienated from
>>
>> their
>>
>> labor, or no labor and building a
>> new democratic structure- that
>> can happen in a small scale , and
>> spread out to new modes of
>> production away from the
>> destruction of capital-such as chiapas
>> and taking over factories in
>> Argentina.
>> ----- Original Message ----- From:
>> "Andy Blunden" <
>>
>> ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
>>
>>
>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture,
>> Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
>> <mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>>
>> Sent: Friday, March
>> 21, 2014 8:35 AM
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: poverty/class
>>
>>
>> Yes, it seems to me that the
>> burgeoning inequality created
>>
>> by
>>
>> neoliberalism is a situation
>> crying out for imaginative
>>
>> social
>>
>> entrepreneurship, i.e., social
>> movement building. It is good
>> to hear that the 1/99 protests
>> have generated talk about
>> inequality, but that in itself
>> does not create a solution,
>> does it?
>> Andy
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> ------------
>> *Andy Blunden*
>> http://home.mira.net/~andy/
>> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
>> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
>>
>>
>>
>> Avram Rips wrote:
>>
>> Innovation and
>> entrepreneurship in some ways means
>> capital crowding out
>> social space and solidarity. This
>>
>> is
>>
>> evident in cities-whole
>> neighborhoods taken over by
>> wealthy crafts people, and
>> little focus on co-operative
>> movements for working
>> class people-where a new focus on
>> participatory democracy
>> can be developed ,and working
>> class culture in the
>> Gramscian sense. take care! Avram
>> ----- Original Message
>> ----- From: "mike cole"
>> <lchcmike@gmail.com
>> <mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>>
>> To: "Andy Blunden"
>> <ablunden@mira.net
>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
>>
>> Cc: "eXtended Mind,
>> Culture, Activity"
>> <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
>> <mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
>>
>> Sent: Friday, March 21,
>> 2014 12:31 AM
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re:
>> poverty/class
>>
>>
>> Andy--- My intent in
>> the garbled sentence you query
>> was to suggest that the
>> discourse in the US
>> around vicious inequalities has
>> increased markedly in
>> the past year in
>> tandem with a kind of frenzy in
>>
>> those
>>
>> parts of academia I
>> come in contact with
>> about "design, culture, and
>> creativity" all of which
>> are linked to
>> innovation and entrepreneurship. I
>>
>> very
>>
>> interested in the
>> nature of imagination
>> and creativity but I they
>>
>> often
>>
>> appear to be new code
>> words for social and
>> individual salvation in a lean,
>> mean, neo-liberal
>> world.
>>
>> Maybe just another of
>> my confusions.
>> mike
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 19, 2014
>> at 6:14 PM, Andy Blunden
>> <ablunden@mira.net
>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>
>> Mike, could you
>> clarify a little your comment
>> below ...
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> ------------------------------
>> ------------
>>
>> *Andy Blunden*
>>
>> http://home.mira.net/~andy/
>> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
>>
>> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
>>
>>
>>
>> mike cole wrote:
>>
>> ... My fear
>> that is appearance is
>>
>> non-accidentally rated to explosion of
>> concern about
>> poverty/class (the 1%/99% idea
>> has become
>> ubiquitous in
>> American
>> discourse).
>>
>> mike
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
>> Assistant Professor
>> Department of Anthropology
>> 883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
>> Brigham Young University
>> Provo, UT 84602
>> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
>> Assistant Professor
>> Department of Anthropology
>> 883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
>> Brigham Young University
>> Provo, UT 84602
>> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>>
>
>
--
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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