[Xmca-l] Re: fixed/fluid

[Larry Purss]

Rod,
I am not sure if my reply reached you.
Raymond is talking about this particular separation [as such] IF one
locates the socialcultural in the already formed and known THEN implicity
was is beyond the already formed must be located somewhere else and Raymond
says at THIS particular epoch we happen to divide the world THIS way and
[as such] the living,here, now spontaneous BECOMES SUBJECTIVE.

HE EXPLICITLY SAYS THIS IS A PARTICULAR WAY of defining [LABELLING] the
aspects of a unit of analysis.
however, IF WE CHANGE OUR DEFINITIONS then what is known and already formed
changes and implicitly what is spontaneous, living here now specific and
SUBJECTIVE also changes.
I am fascinated by how we have historically proposed to  *cut* from the
continuum of nature and the recognition that the objective and subjective
are neither all fixed or all fluid but the relations can shift over time.
Is this shift a shift in meaning?
Larry

On Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 12:14 AM, Rod Parker-Rees <
R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk> wrote:

> Larry, please excuse me stepping in with no knowledge of Williams's book
> beyond the paragraph you cite but I was struck by how his account of the
> social (fixed?) and the personal (fluid?) relates to my own developing
> interest in conceptual and contextual frames of meaning. Concepts are
> social, formed and RELATIVELY fixed (though mutable and shifting on a
> slower timescale) and contexts are embodied, here, now and RELATIVELY
> subjective (though also inescapably intersubjective or intrasubjective)
> but, as Vygotsky pointed out in his account of language development, the
> uniquely personal meanings which inhere in specific contexts are surrounded
> by and immersed in the 'final/ideal form' of conceptual meanings. The
> 'spontaneous concepts' which are discovered in the patterns of 'first hand'
> engagement with the environment of things and persons are framed and
> corralled by the already formed, social 'schooled' or 'scientific' concepts
> which are shared by members of a culture so the moving cannot really escape
> from the fixed, though it can certainly wriggle in its grasp. And that
> wriggling, the felt experience of an imperfect fit between the 'fluid' and
> the 'fixed' is what allows both to be acknowledged and each to be
> influenced by the other. Fixed forms change as people's ways of interacting
> change under their grasp and our fluid ways of acting and interacting are
> 'contained' and framed by our awareness of (relatively) fixed social
> patterns, expectations and 'rules'.
>
> My own particular interest in this is in the transition, in early
> childhood, from an umwelt of contextual meanings, where the 'fixed'
> structures of concept systems are 'out there' in the fabric of the
> environment and the minds of others, to a socialised mind which
> progressively internalises and appropriates these conceptual 'languages'.
> But the wriggling does not stop at some point when childhood 'gives way' to
> adulthood and the passions of the flesh are never quite contained by the
> 'dress' of social constraints!
>
> All the best,
>
> Rod
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces+rod.parker-rees=plymouth.ac.uk@mailman.ucsd.edu
> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+rod.parker-rees=plymouth.ac.uk@mailman.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of Larry Purss
> Sent: 04 November 2014 07:37
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] fixed/fluid
>
> I have been reflecting on *themes* [activity, meaning, structure, and
> mathematical systems] I also have kept in mind David's comments
> recommending turning to *structure of feeling* [chapter 9 of Raymond
> Williams book "Marxism and Literary"] The theme of the already formed [as
> sociocultural] which leaves the dynamic *forming and *formative* aspects of
> lived experience as moved to the
> *personal* realm.
>
> Williams wrote on page 7
>
> "IF the social is always past, in the sense that it is always formed, we
> have indeed to find other terms for the undeniable experience of the
> present: not only the temporal present, the realization of this and this,
> but the SPECIFICITY of present being, the inalienable PHYSICAL, within
> which we may discern and acknowledge institutions, formations, positions,
> but not always as fixed products, DEFINING products. And then IF the social
> IS the fixed and explicit - the KNOWN relationships, institutions,
> formations, positions, - ALL that is present and moving, ALL that ESCAPES
> FROM the fixed and the explicit and the KNOWN, IS GRASPED and DEFINED AS
> the personal: this, HERE, now, alive, active and SUBJECTIVE"
>
> In discussing the *themes* of activity and meaning I find this paragraph
> indicating the way Raymond Williams figures [out] the way *meaning*
> develops illuminating.
> I see this paragraph as informative and figurative.
>
> Larry
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