[Xmca-l] Re: Having an experience
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Thu Jul 16 23:47:33 PDT 2015
Beth. yes, when you reflect on something, it is already
past. If you want to reproduce it, then as a human being you
will have to analyse it.
The trade of being an artist is the capacity to synthesise
the elements and give you something of the ineffable. But I
love that quote you have from Vygotsky, where he claims that
art not only excites the experience in the reader, but also
/explains/ it. I think that is actually setting a high
standard for art. Dickens did not explain Dickensian London,
but he represented it so faithfully.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
On 17/07/2015 4:13 PM, Beth Ferholt wrote:
> But when we reflect on some things it is hard to do so
> without loosing the whole entirely in the process of
> reflection.
>
> Jay said in a chain recently, in response to a related
> question, something about having an artist on every
> research team. I have been thinking about this. If the
> "artist, in comparison with his fellows, is one who is not
> only especially gifted in powers of execution but in
> unusual sensitivity to the qualities of things" then this
> is who we need to tell us which property is the one that
> can characterize the experience as a whole.
>
> No? Am I missing something in what you just wrote? The
> unity is prior but how to study the object if this unity
> is its essence? -- sort of like the empty space in the
> bowl being the bowl, so when you study the bowl itself
> then you miss the whole point.
>
> I am thinking of these two quotes, although maybe I am
> conflating things?:
>
> "Its nature and import can be expressed only by art,
> because there is a unity of experience that can be
> expressed only as an experience." and
>
> “Few understand why it is imperative not only to have the
> effect of art take shape and excite the reader or
> spectator but also to explain art, /and to explain it in
> such a way that the explanation does not kill the
> emotion/.” -- p. 254, Vygotsky (1971)
>
>
> I am really meaning this question in a very practical way,
> thinking of how I am always speaking to preschool teachers
> who describe their students and the activities with these
> students with such art, and how I am getting better at
> creating classroom spaces that support this description --
> but am still not clear about how to consistently create
> spaces in my papers for similar forms of representation
> and reflection.
>
>
> This question also comes from reading the Alfredo and Rolf
> paper, and thinking about Leigh Star's work.
>
>
> Beth
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 1:45 AM, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
> No, no, Beth. As Dewey says:
>
> "This unity is neither emotional, practical, nor
> intellectual, for these terms name distinctions
> that reflection can make within it. In
> discourse//about//an experience, we must make use
> of these adjectives of interpretation. In going
> over an experience in mind//after/ /its
> occurrence, we may find that one property rather
> than another was sufficiently dominant so that it
> characterizes the experience as a whole."
>
> Isn't this beautiful scientific prose! We make these
> distinction when we *reflect* on an experience. And
> perhaps we include the experience in our
> autobiography, act it out on the stage, analyse it
> scientifically, all of which presupposes analysis and
> synthesis. But it is important to recognise that the
> unity is prior. It is not only a unity of emotion and
> cognition (for example) but also of attention and will
> - and any other categories you abstract from an
> experience.
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
> On 17/07/2015 3:00 PM, Beth Ferholt wrote:
>> 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 <mailto: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/
>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>> 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:osu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+glassman.13
>> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces%2Bglassman.13>=osu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu
>> <mailto: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/
>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>> 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:ehe.ohio-state.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+mglassman
>> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces%2Bmglassman>=ehe.ohio-state.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu
>> <mailto: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
>> <mailto: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/
>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>> 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
>> <mailto:bferholt@brooklyn.cuny.edu>
>> Phone: (718) 951-5205 <tel:%28718%29%20951-5205>
>> Fax: (718) 951-4816 <tel:%28718%29%20951-4816>
>
>
>
>
> --
> 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
> <mailto:bferholt@brooklyn.cuny.edu>
> Phone: (718) 951-5205
> Fax: (718) 951-4816
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