[Xmca-l] Re: Hope and Despair as a "blues Hope In Morten Nissen's Ethical Prototype

[Larry Purss]

Mike,
I have read the introduction of Bloch's book on hope.
[PAGE xxviii] has a fascinating exploration as both the objective factor
and the subjective factor developing each within the other to form a new
possibility which is "not yet" formed.

I find this way of understanding parelling Vygotsky's notion of the "unity"
of word meaning as the germ cell.  Can a case be made that at the micro
level of "words" devoid of meaning are empty shells [dead forms]  AND the
micro level of "meaning" without thought cannot go "inner"
That the same [possibly universal] human process applies to human
being/becoming.

Subjectivity without the objective factor is meaningless subjectivity but
objectivity without the subjective factor is "dead" or lacks the "force"
[power] of life-vitality and becomes "merely" objects.  Human being
therefor is a "unity" [a new form] that may become more or less
"crystallized" human being which participates within the "gaps" which
"exist" between the crystallized "unity" of the "self" and the "not yet"
possibility.

Can "human being" as a "unity" [subjective and objective factors which BOTH
develop begin from different "roots" become, through development a new
synthesis that is an "expansion" beyond either mere preconscious
subjectivity [or a term that may reflect an embryo that must incubate] and
also an expansion beyond "mere" preconscious objectivity [the always
already thrown crystallized facet of objective form.
To separate this "unity" of human being is "as if" separating the "unity"
of word meaning into "words" and "meanings" destroying the unity and
leaving merely "generalization" that looses the specificity of "concrete
universals" [prototypes] [situated events].

Bloch is offering us a personal way  of making "sense" [Bahktin's themes],
emerging within German Idealism [Kant, etc] AND German Romanticism.

Just speculating, going out on limb, playing with figurative worlds.
Bloch seems to invite a close reading of  his 3 volumes containing over
1000 pages. [17 volumes in total he wrote]
I was fascinated to know who he was friends with [Simmel, Lukacs, Benjamin,
Adorno] but incarnating "hope"  The word incarnating seems appropriate to
the way Bloch approached the unity of the human being and human nature.

His personal autobiography through Europe and America  also seems relevant
Larry

On Sat, Feb 14, 2015 at 10:58 AM, Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Larry, I noticed this too.
>
> Try substituting "hope" for "mission", "goal", "purpose" ,"object", etc in
> Activity theory, as in, the system is defined by its purpose.
>
> Try "The system is defined by its hope."  The meanings overlap enough to
> spring Activity theory free of its rather mechanical and technological aura.
>
> Andy uses "project" to give us another pespective on acitivity systems,
> so-called, and now Nissen proposes "hope."
>
> Good enough for me.
>
> H
>
> Helena Worthen
> helenaworthen@gmail.com
>
> On Feb 14, 2015, at 10:36 AM, Larry Purss wrote:
>
> > For those engaged with Morten Nissen's collective project I would like to
> > invite a close reading the concluding section [pages A36 to A39] in his
> > article "Meeting Youth in Movement" [I have reattached for ease of
> access]
> >
> > Morten frames his "approach" as an approach of "hope". He writes,
> >
> > "what I am doing here, then, is articulating the hope, the possibility,
> the
> > deeply historical emergent narrative, still very much unfinished - and
> > perhaps temporarily halted - of a trans-pedagological tinkering of
> > collectives, as part of an expanding and responsive welfare state. ....
> > makes this a 'blues hope' in Cheryl Mattingly's sense of the term (2010)
> > the kind of hope that remains close to its dialectical counterpart
> despair
> > [LP and dread].  It shares with certain religious utopia a
> counterintuitive
> > radicalism that calls forth doubt.  But contrary to religious versions of
> > blues hope, this is written as inherently contestable, in the way that it
> > still claims to present a real possibility, a concrete utopia in Bloch's
> > sense."
> >
> > I would add that some prototypical versions with an ethics based in a
> > religious ground could also include a hope that is inherently contestable
> > open possibility that "could be". The term "religious" has multiple
> > meanings and sense and some protypes enact concrete utopia in Bloch's
> sense.
> >
> > I also want to bring in Morten's understanding of "met-phor". On page A38
> > that a version such as Morten's brings in a spatial or geographical
> > instantiation. He says,
> >
> > "Although 'movement' and 'neutral ground' like Vygotsky's 'zone of
> proximal
> >> development' [and many other theoretical constructs], addresses space
> >> metaphorically, it is at the same time quite *corporeal. [LP-
> >> incorporated, embodied, incarnated]*. "
> >
> >
> > The section following elaborates on Morten's notion of "spaces"  Morten
> > makes a case that how our understanding can become prototypical [as
> > concrete universals] is through the development of "models" [prototypes
> > carry models and possibly metaphors or figural worlds]  Models AS
> methods.
> > The concluding section of this article is titled "Theory: as Prototypical
> > Narrative" Theory enacting hope and despair, hope and dread, and
> > collectives [third spaces] being/becoming embodied places of meaning and
> > relevance *AS ETHICAL AND POLITICAL places of empowerment*.
> > Morten's concluding comment references Derrida as projecting hope
> endlessly
> > postponed as the "places" of collective enactments, the places of "could
> > be", and "yet to come" within a transformational participatory stance.
> >
> > I continue to search for ways to expand the understanding of "metaphor"
> > beyond "mere" meataphor to indicate that metaphor is deeply "real"
> enacting
> > and embodying collectives.  In other words "real" metaphor contrasted
> with
> > "ornamental" metaphor which embellishes the literal.
> >
> > Larry
> > <FEBRUARY 10 2015 NISSEN MORTEN Meeting Youth in Movement.pdf>
>
>
>