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

[Morten Nissen]

Hi xmca
Definitely SCHAT scholars should learn from Ernst Bloch, and even beyond his introduction. I was first introduced to Bloch by Athanasios Marvakis who wrote in his PhD in German about appropriating Bloch for the Berlin branch of Vygotskian critical psychology. He also wrote something in English.
See https://www.academia.edu/attachments/4442791/download_file?st=MTQyNDEwNTM2Myw1LjEwMy4yMzEuNzUsMTUzMzk4MzU%3D&s=swp-toolbar
Or if you are not logged in, try first http://www.academia.edu/763137/THE_UTOPIAN_SURPLUS_IN_HUMAN_AGENCY_USING_ERNST_BLOCH_S_PHILOSOPHY_FOR_PSYCHOLOGY

Best,
Morten

Morten Nissen
PhD, Dr. Psych.
Professor
Department of Education
Aarhus University
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Tlf: +45 30282418<tel:+45%2030282418>
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Den 16/02/2015 kl. 17.29 skrev mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu<mailto:mcole@ucsd.edu>>:

I also read only the preface as a kind of summary, and skimmed, Larry.
Perhaps Morten will know of a particular essay that can provide the sort of
"short form" that Annalisa was asking for. I do not know of such a summary
by Bloch.  600 pages is a lot, never mind 1000. Others have provided
synopses and the topic has apparently been rather widely debated.

I am dealing with a number of simultaneous deadlines, one of which is the
next issue of MCA so cannot be of much help here for now.
mike




On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 7:51 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com<mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>> wrote:

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<mailto: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<mailto: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>







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