[Xmca-l] Re: how to broaden/enliven the xmca discussion

[Larry Purss]

Andy , David

The Purves article on writing as *activity* *acts* and *operations* is
translating what I read is another language game of *process* and
*composing processeS* that refer to *conscious* and *unconscious* processes
that emerge or recede into the unconscious.

THIS particular act of *translation* [from process language TO activity
language] and asking us to become *dis-embedded* from the terms *process*
and *unconscious* and shift to a language of *activity* as meaning
processeS  and *operations* in relation to *acts* as coming in and out of
conscious awareness seems like an example of the use of *activity* and
*acts* and *operations* as gesturing at the same phenomena [knowledge,
awareness, focussing, coming into and out of *being as begings] as other
language games [pragmatism, phenomenology, etc] as observing and commenting
on these *processes/activities*.

I *read* [and translated] the terms of activity theory [as presented in
this particular article] as gesturing towards the phenomena of moving and
dwelling and preferring one particular language game over another.

I couldn't help *hearing* this article as an invitation to *dwell* or
*occupy* THIS way of performing as activities, acts, and operations [which
come in and out of *focus* or *attention* or *attunement*.

The metaphor of psycho -dramatics and being invited *on stage* to perform
THIS ACT with these ACTORS.

My question is if this particular language game is more *instrumental*
than other alternatives and as instrumental is *preferable*? [a question of
*ought*]

Should this particular language game with the terms *activity* acts* and
*operations* BE LIMITED to *behaviour* or is the language game more
EXPANSIVE and going BEYOND behaviour to play in the realm of *the*
unconscious and conscious moving into and out of awareness.

I also am *reading* Peirce's *secondness* [as inhibition of SELF-control]
and letting phenomena BE PRESENT as compelling and THERE prior to thirdness
[general, symbolic as within nature as present and showing up when
SELF-control is inhibited]

Larry

On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 12:49 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> So David, when you read Chapter 5 of Thinking and Speech, what do you call
> those combinations of sign-mediated actions which Vygotsky describes with
> words such as "complex" or "pseudoconcept" or "heap"?
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>
>
> David Kellogg wrote:
>
>> This morning I had the great pleasure of waking up in my own bed and
>> listening to Yo-yo Ma, Emanuel Ax and Itzhak Perlman playing this:
>>
>>  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRkWCOTImOQ
>>
>> It's the D Major Cello sonata number two by Mendelssohn, played, as
>> Yo-yo Ma tells us, on the Davydov (no, that THAT Davydov) Stradivarius
>> that was probably used to perform the sonata for the very first time
>> in front of Mendelssohn himself. Now, throughout this concert, Ma has
>> been something of a stickler for "the original", and Perelman has been
>> pulling politely but pointedly towards a more personal interpretation.
>>
>> So at around 6:45 on the clip, Perelman tells Ma that if Mendelssohn
>> himself had heard the sonata played on that very cello, then he,
>> Perelman, was sitting in the very seat that Mendelssohn had occupied,
>> and that therefore his freer interpretation was really closer to
>> Mendelssohn than any attempt to recreate the sonata with period
>> instruments. Mercifully, at this point, Ax interupts them and starts
>> to play.
>>
>> Back in Sydney, Seth Chaiklin and I found ourselves in a somewhat
>> similar argument, with Seth in Perelman's chair, and me clinging
>> rather obstinately to a paleo-Vygotskyan interpretation which actually
>> rejects "activity" as a unit of analysis for anything but behavior,
>> and most certainly as a unit of psychological analysis. Seth's
>> argument was pragmatist: for certain practical applications, we need
>> new interpretations, including revisionist ones. Mine was an argument
>> in favor of species diversity: when the revisionist account supplants
>> the original to such a degree that Vygotsky's original argument is no
>> longer accessible to people, we need to go back to original texts (and
>> this is why it is so important to make the original texts at least
>> recoverable--once they are gone, it is really a whole species of
>> thinking that has become extinct).
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>>
>> PS: Andy, what shocked me about Bonnie Nardi's plenum in Sydney was
>> not her use of "society" or "object": actually, I think I would have
>> liked it better if she had used those terms a little more imprecisely,
>> in their folk meanings. In fact, a little more IMPRECISION might have
>> made it even clearer to us the sheer horror of what she was
>> contemplating.
>>
>> For those on the list who missed it, the plenary focused on a world
>> without jobs--that is, a world where five-day forty-hour jobs are
>> replaced by "micro-work". Nardi admitted that this was a rather
>> dystopian state of affairs--but she also showed us what she called the
>> "bright side": more leisure, less greenhouse gases, and also human
>> identities less narrowly tied to work. As one person in the conference
>> pointed out, and Nardi confirmed, it would also mean more time for the
>> spiritual side of life.
>>
>> What was not pointed out was the effect of all this on the "object" of
>> "society", using both terms in their folk senses. The working class is
>> being ground down into the economic position of short term sex workers
>> and atomized into the social position of housewives. Inequality is now
>> at levels not seen since 1820. Even a cursory study of history tells
>> us that the result of this is not going to be individual spirituality
>> but rather more violence. The only "bright side" I can see is if that
>> force is organized, social, and directed against social equality
>> rather than against fellow members of the working class.
>>
>> dk
>>
>>
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