[Xmca-l] Re: Having an experience
Lplarry
lpscholar2@gmail.com
Fri Jul 17 08:18:14 PDT 2015
I will add another slant on this notion of "having" an experience that theoretical processes when "reaching" or drawing or formulating or drawing " conclusion" EFFECTIVELY CONCEAL. In Dewey's words:
"We say OF an experience of thinking that we reach or draw a conclusion. Theoretical formulation OF the process is often MADE IN SUCH TERMS as to CONCEAL effectively the similarity of "conclusion" TO the consummating phase of every developing INTEGRAL experience. These formulations (constructions) apparently take their cue FROM the SEPARATE propositions that are premisses AND the proposition that is "the" conclusion so AS TO GIVE RISE TO a third" In fact, IN an experience of thinking, premisses emerge (show up) ONLY AS a conclusion BE/COMES MANIFEST. The experience, like that of watching a storm reach its height and gradually subside IS ONE OF continuous movement of SUBJECT- MATTER/S.
this returns to the play on "matter" and " subject matter".
To undergo an experience is to "take in" a "subject-matter".
To read Dewey carefully reveals ma or the pause as well as the making/doing/ WITHIN an experience.
Heidegger in exploring da/sein (being there) concealed the "mit" (meaning with)
An experience is mit/da/sein
An experience is with/there/being
An experience is undergoing/taking in/realizing/"perceiving"
What an experience is not is the abstracting of re/presenting the abstracting of re/cognizing the abstracting of conclusions FROM the unity of having an experience consummated.
Objects and subjects are derivative OF the undergoing of the "subject matter". What is "at hand" (as means) for reflecting back on an experience is not an experience of the subject matter (world) undergone/taken in
-----Original Message-----
From: "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net>
Sent: 2015-07-16 11:48 PM
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Having an experience
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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