[Xmca-l] Re: Having an experience

[Beth Ferholt]

Or reproducing the part that represents the whole?  Like a fractal? I think
it is the similarity across scales that makes an experience proleptic, or
gives that 'bliss conferred at the beginning of the road to redemption"
that Vasilyuk refers to.  You have an experience on several timescales and
so a sense of deja-vu is central to having an experience. This is what I am
thinking about after reading both the paper of Dewey's and your recent
piece on perezhivanie, Andy, although I am picking up on a small piece of
the last email in this chain -- : If something is only itself in its whole
then you can't study it, is what is bothering me.  Beth

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 11:22 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> Not "getting at something", Michael. Just pursuing this question you
> raised about Dewey's saying that the aesthetic quality of medieval
> buildings arises from their not being "planned" like buildings are
> nowadays. He goes on to say "Every work of art follows the plan of, and
> pattern of, a complete experience." The puzzle he is raising here is the
> completeness of an experience which gives it its aesthetic quality, and
> this cannot be created by assembling together parts in the way a modern
> building is planned. An experience - the kind of thing which sticks in your
> mind - is an original or prior unity, not a combination, and this is what
> gives a work of art that ineffable quality, something which can only be
> transmitted by reproducing that whole of an experience.
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> On 17/07/2015 2:32 AM, Glassman, Michael wrote:
>
>> Andy,
>>
>> I'm still not sure about your question.  Did I set out to have that
>> experience, that morning...no, I don't think so (it was a long time ago,
>> but I'm pretty sure no).  Could I have just treated it as an indiscriminate
>> activity, probably, I had done so before.
>>
>> But I am guessing you're getting a something here Andy?
>>
>> Michael
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-l-bounces+glassman.13=osu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:
>> xmca-l-bounces+glassman.13=osu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy
>> Blunden
>> Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:21 PM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Having an experience
>>
>> YOu said: "... But that time I had the experience with the paintings..."
>>
>> I mean that was an experience. Did you set out that morning to have that
>> experience?
>> RE, your question: "what does he mean when he says you can't do things
>> indiscriminately and have vital experience, but you also can't plan things?"
>> Andy
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> *Andy Blunden*
>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>> On 17/07/2015 2:09 AM, Glassman, Michael wrote:
>>
>>> Well I'm not sure I understand your question Andy, but perhaps it has
>>> something to do with my grandfather's favorite saying (translated from
>>> Yiddish),
>>>
>>> Man plans, God laughs.
>>>
>>> Michael
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: xmca-l-bounces+mglassman=ehe.ohio-state.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu
>>> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+mglassman=ehe.ohio-state.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu]
>>> On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
>>> Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:04 PM
>>> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Having an experience
>>>
>>> So Michael, there was just that one occasion, in all your museum-going,
>>> when you had an experience. Was that planned?
>>> (I don't mean to say you haven't had a number of such experiences,
>>> Michael ... just some number actually)
>>>
>>> Andy
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>> On 17/07/2015 1:19 AM, Glassman, Michael wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Larry and all,
>>>>
>>>> I think this is one of the most complex aspects of experience, what
>>>> does he mean when he says you can't do things indiscriminately and have
>>>> vital experience, but you also can't plan things?  I have discussed
>>>> (argued) about this a lot with my students.  I have especially seen him
>>>> raise this point in at least two of his great works, Democracy and
>>>> Education and Experience and Nature - and again of course in Art as
>>>> Experience (notice he is not saying how Art enters into experience but how
>>>> art is experience - I have come to notice these little things more and more
>>>> in his writing).
>>>>
>>>> The difficulty we have, at least in the United States because of the
>>>> dominance of the idea of meta-cognition, is that we too often translate
>>>> what individuals are bringing in to experience to organize it as a form of
>>>> meta-cognition.  It is kind of possible to make that interpretation from
>>>> Democracy and Education, although what I think he is doing more is arguing
>>>> against misinterpretations of his work as random, child centered
>>>> activities.  I think he is clearer in Experience and Nature that we bring
>>>> in who we are at the moment into the activity, and use who we are (I don't
>>>> want to say identity) as an organizing principle for what we do.  It is
>>>> perhaps one of the places where Dewey and Vygotsky are close.  Perhaps I
>>>> can use the same Jackson Pollock example.  The first few times I saw his
>>>> paintings I was trying to "apprecitate" them because I was told that was
>>>> the best way to experience them.  Dewey says no vital experience there
>>>> because my activities become stilted and artificia
>>>>     l.  Sometimes I went through the museum and just looked at
>>>> pictures, one to the other.  No vital experience there, just random
>>>> threads.  But that time I had the experience with the paintings I was
>>>> allowing who I was, what had been built up in the trajectory of my life to
>>>> enter into my experience with the painting, making it a vital experience.
>>>> I think Dewey makes the argument in Experience and Nature that it is not
>>>> just the experience the moment before, but the experiences leading to that
>>>> experience, the context of my life, of my parent's life, of a long line of
>>>> historical experiences.
>>>>
>>>> Anyway, my take.
>>>>
>>>> Michael
>>>>
>>>> -
>>>>
>>>
>


-- 
Beth Ferholt
Assistant Professor
Department of Early Childhood and Art Education
Brooklyn College, City University of New York
2900 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11210-2889

Email: bferholt@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Phone: (718) 951-5205
Fax: (718) 951-4816