[Xmca-l] Re: Notes on Blindness

Fri Jan 23 20:34:48 PST 2015

Larry, Mike, Annalisa and all,
I was thinking about signers when I posted my email, thinking that intonation is a form of gesture. I like the Vygotsky idea from Larry on thought as a unity of communication and generalization and wonder if it is relevant to Hutto on basic and scaffolded cognition. This email will go out later this evening (New Mexico time), since I don’t know the password where I am. I am about to take part in a weekly chanting at our synagogue. I am not Jewish (my wife is), and I don’t really understand much of the Hebrew as I chant it, but the sharing of the sounds, the music, the rhythm is certainly meaningful for me. Chanting, of course, is in unison, unlike prototypical dialog, where turns are taken. I am thinking back now to Annalisa’s post two days ago (ancient!) with a link to the church of St. John Coltrane. Jazz blends unison and turn taking. IN FACT, dialog is often marked by overlapping turns, which can indicate either contestation or agreement. Cultural differences in turn taking are interesting.
Henry

> On Jan 23, 2015, at 5:39 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Mike,
> This term "infusion" seems to suggest "permeable" type flowing intonation
> into words. Luria's voice should definitely be added to explore this realm.
> 
> Adding  Zinchenko's voice to this chorus, in the book chapter "Thought and
> Word The Approaches of L. S. Vygotsky and G. G. Shpet"  Zinchenko wrote"
> Andrew Bely saw movement and rhythm behind thought. Mikhail Bakhtin saw
> emotion and will behind thought, and he saw intonation IN thought, "the
> truly acting mind is a mind of emotions and volition, a mind of intonation,
> and this intonation essentially PENETRATES all the significant moments of
> thinking" [Bahktin].  He also saw behind thought another person - an
> interlocutor, or participant in a dialogue, "Human thought becomes a true
> thought, an idea, only under conditions of live contact with someone else's
> thought embodied in someone else's voice, which is someone else's mind
> expressed in words .... The idea is a LIVING EVENT, occurring in a point of
> dramatic meeting of two or more minds.  In this regard, the idea is similar
> to word, with which it is dialectically united" [Bahktin]. Vygotsky
> expressed a similar idea about thought as a unity of communication and
> generalization. [page 214]
> 
> So the term "boundary" may be an inaccurate metaphor for exploring this
> realm implying two separated places or poles [the verbal and the nonverbal].
> The realm we are exploring is trying to convey that ALL living events
> including verbal events are "infused" with rhythm and intonation.
> 
> On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 3:50 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Henry,Larry et al -- I understand the use of the term "at the boundary of
>> the verbal and the nonverbal." I for sure agree that intonation is
>> essential to language. The word boundary, I believe, may undercut the
>> equally important idea that intonation *infuses* language. *It* is not on
>> the border. I love watching signers, knowing no sign, because of the
>> intonation and dancing movements that accompany the oral speech.
>> 
>> It is significant that Tanya Akhutina is using these ideas because she is
>> one of the leading
>> practitioners of Luria's ideas. In *Man With a Shattered World* and
>> elsewhere, Luria talks of "kinetic melodies" and uses such melodies as part
>> of this program of remediation of Zasetski's shattered brain. Oliver Sachs
>> has just written a book on music I have not seen yet. It must have a good
>> deal to say here.
>> mike
>> 
>> mike
>> 
>> On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 3:18 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Henry,
>>> This quote, especially the aspect:
>>> 
>>> Intonation is always at the boundary of the verbal and the nonverbal,
>> the
>>> spoken and the unspoken. Intonation is oriented in two directions: toward
>>> the listener... and toward the object of the utterance as if to a third
>>> living participant.
>>> 
>>> This brings in the cornerstone of the 'object" AS IF a third living
>>> participant.  Intonation, attunement, and resonance exploring the rhythm
>> AT
>>> the boundary or the margin of this triangulated  "space"  of where
>>> possibility exists. This extralinguistic context with its felt structure
>>> which is not yet articulated.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 2:57 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Mike and all,
>>>> I found this quote from Voloshinov (1926) in T.V. AKHUTINA
>>>> The Theory of Verbal Communication in the Works of M.M. Bakhtin and
>> L.S.
>>>> Vygotsky (2003, p. 102):
>>>> "Intonation establishes the close connection between the word and the
>>>> extralinguistic context. Living intonation is virtually able to release
>>> the
>>>> word from its verbal limits. . . . Intonation is always at the boundary
>>> of
>>>> the verbal and the nonverbal, the spoken and the unspoken. Intonation
>> is
>>>> oriented in two directions: toward the listener... and toward the
>> object
>>> of
>>>> the utterance as if to a third living participant."
>>>> 
>>>> I wonder what Bakhtin had to say about non-verbal gesture which
>>>> accompanies speech, which could not be seen by a blind person. Does one
>>>> sense become heightened when another is compromised? Does language
>>> provide
>>>> redundancy to help the listener?
>>>> 
>>>> Henry
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On Jan 23, 2015, at 2:02 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> All seems relevant to the imagination thread to me!
>>>>> mike
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 12:36 PM, Greg Thompson <
>>>> greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Larry,
>>>>>> (if you'll allow me this reduction of your post)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Brilliant expansion!
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> -greg
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 12:47 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com
>>> 
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Greg,
>>>>>>> Memory as requiring the process of reduction of the manifold of
>>>>>> experience
>>>>>>> does seem to an interesting question which may offer a possibility
>>> for
>>>>>>> further expansion. I mean this metaphorically as a reciprocal
>> "dance"
>>>> of
>>>>>>> reduction and expansion.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> The "reciprocal" awareness that possibly not only memories but also
>>> our
>>>>>>> theories and our conceptions may be relying too much on the
>> processes
>>>> of
>>>>>>> memory [after the fact] and therefore loosing sight of the
>>>> multi-modality
>>>>>>> of experience as it unfolds.
>>>>>>> Greg as you point "out" - to be seen is to be made (cf. Bakhtin's
>>>> notion
>>>>>>> of "consummation").
>>>>>>> Your insight where you say that filling the whole of the audible
>>>>>>> environment is an experience of beauty, which has something to do
>>> with
>>>>>> the
>>>>>>> complexity of the image  in  motion, alive, moving, unfixed, with
>>>> shades
>>>>>>> and textures constantly
>>>>>>> changing.
>>>>>>> Instead of being isolated, cut off, preoccupied, internally, you
>> are
>>>>>>> presented with a world. You are related to a world. You are
>> addressed
>>>> by
>>>>>> a
>>>>>>> world.
>>>>>>> Robert Nichols in exploring the meaning of freedom and recognition
>>>> says,
>>>>>>> "To stand in a 'free' relation to the world, to oneself and one's
>>>> ethical
>>>>>>> commitments, is to know that one's standpoint does not exhaust the
>>>> total
>>>>>>> range of meaningful, viable, and worthwhile possibilities."  For
>>> Robert
>>>>>>> beauty as 'being-in-the-world' depends on the "extent" to which we
>>>>>> actually
>>>>>>> "embody" the world through receptivity, fragility, indeterminacy,
>> and
>>>>>>> interconnectivity. [similar sentiments to the notion of "surrender"
>>> or
>>>>>>> "acceptance" as an ethical commitment]
>>>>>>> Robert Nichols perceives an ethical commitment that emerges within
>> an
>>>>>>> awareness of how one cares for the world and how one has an
>>>> "attachment"
>>>>>> to
>>>>>>> existence.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Greg, is it possible that memory, and theory "about" how one
>>> re-members
>>>>>> and
>>>>>>> re-cognizes and re-presents and re-duces and then articulates the
>>> world
>>>>>> as
>>>>>>> the "truth"  contributes to being isolated, cut off, preoccupied.
>>> The
>>>>>>> world foreclosed.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Requiring that "we" once again  turn [or re-turn] to being within
>> the
>>>>>> world
>>>>>>> as situated presence. The musical resonance of "attunement" within
>>> the
>>>>>>> world prior to re-collecting and re-ducing the world through memory
>>>> which
>>>>>>> highlights the salient features.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 8:20 PM, Greg Thompson <
>>>>>> greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Annalisa,
>>>>>>>> Yes, you said it very well, much better than I did in my prior
>> post
>>>>>> which
>>>>>>>> was a bit intellectually garbled (and I missed the article that
>> went
>>>>>>> along
>>>>>>>> with it, so thanks for pointing that out!).
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> But I do think that there is an interesting point to be made about
>>> the
>>>>>>>> importance of the reduction of the manifold of experience that is
>>>>>>> essential
>>>>>>>> to memory.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I once assembled a paper that argued that forgetting should be
>> seen
>>> as
>>>>>> a
>>>>>>>> tool of ethnography since when one reduces one's experience to
>> what
>>> is
>>>>>>>> remembered, one has gotten to something that was somehow
>> important.
>>>>>>>> Reviewers thought it was just an excuse for doing lazy
>> ethnographic
>>>>>>>> research. Perhaps it was...
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> What ever happened to that paper?
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I can't remember...
>>>>>>>> -greg
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 3:00 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <
>> annalisa@unm.edu
>>>> 
>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Greg!
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Yes the piece is really great and well produced!
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> If you read the article that accompanies the video on the Times
>>> page,
>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>> writers indicate that over time as he adjusted to blindness, he
>>> came
>>>>>> to
>>>>>>>>> revel in the other senses to the point that when he was helping
>>> with
>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>> movie, he'd forgotten that he'd gone through that painful time,
>> and
>>>>>>>>> apparently wasn't happy to revisit the memories. I think that is
>>> the
>>>>>>>> point
>>>>>>>>> of the last scene with the rain (inside), to show that he began
>> to
>>>>>>> "see"
>>>>>>>>> differently, with sound. Maybe? At least, that is how I
>> interpreted
>>>>>> it.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> I also thought, as you, it was remarkable that he remembered
>>>>>>> photographs,
>>>>>>>>> maybe these map in memory differently? Like you say because of
>>>>>>> reduction
>>>>>>>> of
>>>>>>>>> modality?
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> What also seems significant is that if we don't use those organs
>> of
>>>>>>>>> perceptions we lose memories of those perceptions. Which may mean
>>>>>> that
>>>>>>>>> memory is something that must be reconstructed with the organ
>>>>>> somehow,
>>>>>>>> even
>>>>>>>>> if we aren't using the organ to perceive externally while
>> retrieval
>>>>>> of
>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>> memory? I'm not sure I explained that very well…
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Kind regards,
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Annalisa
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
>>>>>>>> Assistant Professor
>>>>>>>> Department of Anthropology
>>>>>>>> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
>>>>>>>> Brigham Young University
>>>>>>>> Provo, UT 84602
>>>>>>>> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
>>>>>> Assistant Professor
>>>>>> Department of Anthropology
>>>>>> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
>>>>>> Brigham Young University
>>>>>> Provo, UT 84602
>>>>>> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science as an
>>>> object
>>>>> that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science as an object
>> that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>> 