[Xmca-l] Re: Unreading Althusser

[mike cole]

​Hi Michael ---  Glad my earlier query concerning "video gallery"
facilities finally made sense.
Would it be possible to see your student's video? Is it on Youtube?
mike​

On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 7:11 AM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu>
wrote:

> Hi Annalise,
>
> I am not sure I understand your correlation between the video programs and
> kitsch.  It seems to me Morten Nissen is critiquing the establishment view
> of the videos on a number of levels, while still trying to suggest that
> they are a better method than the more individualistic, traditional
> therapies of motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral therapy.  I
> can really sympathize, having spent a number of years on a research project
> comparing motivational interviewing, CBT and treatment as usual (spoiler
> alert, neither of the interventions have any real impact).  And yet that is
> all we do.
>
> U-turn suggests a new method, except at least it seems to me Nissen fears
> it falling into similar traps.  One of the traps is treating the video as
> an object that forces reconsideration of the user's - in this case Birren -
> life structure leading to drug addiction - at least I think that is what
> Nissen is saying.  That the video becomes something controlled by the
> therapy community rather than integrated into the larger life scheme of the
> user.  But I see this as a really complex argument.  Yes, the way that
> Nissen describes this - as an advanced form of video story telling with
> trained videographers it does easily become an object rather than part of
> the processes of life.  Whose video is it, the user's, the videographer's,
> the therapist's, the social work community establishment.  But I think much
> of this has to do with understanding the role of this type of video
> storytelling, which is more about the community, what Nissen I think refers
> to as the collective than the individual (I think this point is kind of
> made at the end of the article).
>
> But what if it could be a different type of video, made from start to
> finish by Birren and other users.  Mike's earlier request for programs
> where individuals can easily make videos makes much more sense.  A student
> working on our research project did her dissertation within a participatory
> action research format in which she organized the homeless youth/users (the
> study was about addiction among homeless youth) into a performance truth.
> She also was looking to create the performance as an object that would lead
> to reflection on the structure of their lives, but I think in a much more
> grass roots, genuine way.
>
>
> Michael
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:
> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Annalisa Aguilar
> Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2015 2:42 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Unreading Althusser
>
> Hello esteemed xmcars,
>
> I have done a quick reading of Morten Nissen's chapter and I would like to
> proffer that what he describes with the video production as a form of
> therapy for the drug addict (as sponsored by state programs), does resemble
> to me the very kind of interactions that happened to create the Kitsch in
> Art and how it came to be that Kitsch is the favorite art of dictators (see
> my previous post in this thread, in particularly I suggest in this context
> the essay by Greenberg as well as the WSJ article).
>
> It is as if what is considered hopeful (helpful), what is considered
> therapeutic(empowering), which is done to transcend the past and the future
> by being in the present, all that is erased by collapsing what is
> meaningful into a formula of the unique or of sentiment (in this case,
> hope), a kind of Möbius strip of experience as possibility, which ends up
> becoming meaningless. Is the glass half full or half empty?
>
> I'm being a more than a little intuitive here, knowing that I may not be
> walking on terra firma, which may not be very smart as I risk the concrete
> blocks of "dogma" crashing around my head: It is easy to label the original
> as dogma if one has adopted the stance of kitsch, I am realizing.
>
> Despite that risk, I sense similar patterns to Nissen's paper and notions
> of kitsch (and how kitsch is created), and while I'm unsure at this point
> of time if this observation has merit, I offer it for discussion with the
> best of intentions.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Annalisa
>
>


-- 
It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an object
that creates history. Ernst Boesch.