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

[Greg Thompson]

Larry,
I'm having a hard time keeping up with you here.
Can you give us a primer on "active" and "passive" orienting as SENS?
I'd love to get to this paper, but it was pretty dense and I'm not sure
that I have the means to bridge to it. Could you help me to make my way
over there?
-greg

On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 12:41 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> How to broaden and enliven the chat?
>
> Bringing Tim to the discussion and the theme of *active* and *passive*
> orienting as SENS.
>
> Here is an attached article from a Merleau-Pony angle on moving in the
> world - contrasting with the
> more cognitive inferential approach.
>
> At least juxtaposing active and passive as notions will engender reflection
> on activity, acts, and operations [unconscious or conscious?]
>
> [PS Peirce suggests  simultaneously BOTH  "perceptual AND inferential
> *processeS* through abductive ways of moving.
>
> I sense Tim Ingold playing within these play grounds
>
> On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 7:23 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 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
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >
>



-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
882 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson