[Xmca-l] Re: Having an experience
David Kellogg
dkellogg60@gmail.com
Sat Jul 18 14:00:23 PDT 2015
Wordsworth's "Simon Lee" was nominated for the BBC's worst poem in English
several years running, and (if I remember correctly) finally won it shortly
before the competition was abolished and replaced with the Evelyn Waugh
award for bad sex writing (here D.H. Lawrence was the man to beat).
My professor Henry Widdowson wrote a whole book chapter on what makes
"Simon Lee" so bad, and--better--how Widdowson solved the Simon Lee problem
perfectly and how this solution made the Lucy poems possible. (Details in
the attached chapter from my book, pp. 15-14). That is what is exciting
about Wordsworth--he really couldn't tell the difference between his bad
poems and his brilliant ones, and instead of just burning the former and
publishing the latter so we remember him for his unadulterated genius, he
just sat on the lot, so today we can pick and choose, laugh and love.
Reading over Peter's offering, though, I have to admit that my book chapter
missed something truly awful about the man ("awful" in both the 19th
Century sense of "awesome" and the 20th Century sense of dreadful). The
sentimental cult of the child that permeates Dickens (think of Oliver
Twist, Little Nell, and the scarcely disguised pedophilia of Little Dorrit)
begins here. It's Wordsworth who retrieves from France and popularizes
Rousseauvian ideas about children and education. But the way he does this
is quite grim: it's a cult for the DEAD child; the child who does not
develop ("We are Six").
Together with Coleridge, Wordsworth was a champion of something called the
"Madras Method" in education--this was an early form of behaviorism that
emphasized unconditional obedience, originally designed for the bastard
offspring of British soldiers in India (see Kipling's novel "Kim"). Later
this was brought back to England and made de rigueur in working class
schools in London. It really was de rigueur mortis: I went to one in 1966,
and I still smart when I think of the canings and pandybattings I earned.
Bernstein's work, written about exactly the time I was going to elementary
school in London, was partly a reaction against the Madras Method and a way
of seeking an alternative for working class youth.
David Kellogg
On Sat, Jul 18, 2015 at 7:27 PM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:
> Wordsworth is alarmingly well-represented in THE STUFFED OWL: AN ANTHOLOGY
> OF BAD VERSE, still available at
> http://www.amazon.com/The-Stuffed-Owl-Anthology-Review/dp/1590170385.
>
> Indeed, the book's title comes from Wordsworth. (FYI I was a college
> English major and the British Lake Poets were among my favorites.)
>
> "WHILE ANNA'S PEERS AND EARLY PLAYMATES TREAD"
>
> WHILE Anna's peers and early playmates tread,
> In freedom, mountain-turf and river's marge;
> Or float with music in the festal barge;
> Rein the proud steed, or through the dance are led;
> Her doom it is to press a weary bed--
> Till oft her guardian Angel, to some charge
> More urgent called, will stretch his wings at large,
> And friends too rarely prop the languid head.
> Yet, helped by Genius--untired comforter,
> The presence even of a stuffed Owl for her 10
> Can cheat the time; sending her fancy out
> To ivied castles and to moonlight skies,
> Though he can neither stir a plume, nor shout;
> Nor veil, with restless film, his staring eyes.
> 1827.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces+smago=uga.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:
> xmca-l-bounces+smago=uga.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of David Kellogg
> Sent: Friday, July 17, 2015 8:29 PM
> To: Andy Blunden; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Having an experience
>
> The context is the concluding chapter of "Psychology of Art", entitled
> "Art and Life". The title itself tells you something of what Vygotsky wants
> to say. The great slogan of nineteenth century realism was for life to
> permeate art, hence the realistic conversations we find in Jane Austen
> (compared to the epistolary novels of the eighteenth century and the speech
> making we find in Samuel Johnson), hence Monet's paintings of railway
> stations, hence "verismo" in Italian opera. But the acmeists (an offshoot
> of symbolism to which Vygotsky was was quite close at the time of writing
> "Psychology of Art") turned this on its head. Their great slogan was for
> art to permeate life, so that each moment of everyday conversation, each
> photograph we take, and each snatch of street noise might be
> live-experienced the way we experience a novel, a painting, or an opera.
>
> Vygotsky says that for this to happen we need art criticism. If art is the
> moment of actual experiencing, art criticism is the "perizhivanie" of the
> experience. This is incorrectly conceived of as "catharisis" (even by
> Vygotsky himself earlier in the book). "Catharisis" is therapeutic and
> self-limiting; it's a matter of explaining away and destroying a pathology;
> this is true whether we read Aristotle or Freud. But that is not
> "perizhivanie". Like all units of development (Vygotsky: "relational
> units"), perizhivanie is a unit that develops: in the infant it means one
> thing and in the art critic something that is linked, but distinct. We can
> say that for the infant, "perizhivanie" is the feeling of what happens more
> or less as it happens (the satisfaction of drinking the milk as you are
> drinking it). But for the art critic, "perizhivanie" is really Wordsworth's
> "emotion recollected in tranquility". It's a catharsis which doesn't
> disappear but which develops into a more complex, more potent, and higher
> form instead.
>
> Wordworth wrote some good poems, but we can only really see how and why
> when we read his really bad ones, and I think "The Tables Turned (Enough of
> Art and Science)" is an example of Wordsworth at his very worst. Ruqaiya
> Hasan wrote that what is different about verbal art (she means what is
> different about verbal ART as opposed to other forms of verbalism) is that
> we can separate its verbalization from a layer she calls "symbolic
> articulation" and we can even seperate this layer of symbolic articulation
> from a layer she calls "theme". In Wordworth's poem, the verbalization is
> the rhyme and meter, the way in which "leaves" rhymes with "receives" and
> "intellect" does NOT rhyme with "dissect". The layer of symbolic
> articulation is at the level of "barren leaves" and "murder to dissect",
> both of which are symbols which articulate Wordworth's small-minded,
> reactionary, English disgust with and hatred for the great French tradition
> of rationalism.
>
> But the theme? The theme is..."turning the tables" and abandoning your
> books! This is why it's really a bad poem--the means contradicts the
> message. I hope I have not, with this explanation, destroyed anyone's
> pleasure in the poem, but anyone who feels that I have should go and read
> "Tintern Abbey" or the Lucy poems....here you can see that the layers do
> not contradict each other at all, and the difference really like the
> difference between chewing dry crunchy barren leaves and fresh green shoots
> that you can whistle with or put in your salad.
>
> David Kellogg
>
> On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 4:24 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
> > You may be right, Rod. Perhaps Beth could give us the quote in context
> > so we have a better chance of understanding it?
> > Andy
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > *Andy Blunden*
> > http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> > On 17/07/2015 5:19 PM, Rod Parker-Rees wrote:
> >
> >> Apologies again for coming late into a conversation but I was
> >> interested by a disparity between my reading of Beth's quote from
> >> Vygotsky and (what I understand as being) Andy's reading of the same
> >> quote. Andy seems to read the quote as saying that art BOTH produces
> >> (or perhaps catalyses) an experience in the observer AND explains
> >> this experience but I read the quote (and Beth's use of it) as
> >> suggesting that it is imperative BOTH for art to bring on the
> >> experience AND that that experience should be explained (it is
> >> imperative ... to explain it) - though not necessarily explained BY
> >> the art itself. The reason why I was intrigued by this difference in
> >> interpretations is that it made me reflect on what is achieved when
> >> an experience is explained. I suspect that we tend to focus too much,
> >> even exclusively, on what the explanation brings to (and out from)
> >> the experience but isn't it also true that the process of explaining
> >> an experience also affects the medium in which the explanation is
> >> expressed. A language which is bent into the service of explaining
> >> experiences is bent by that process, becoming enriched by the ways it
> >> has been used, acquiring a patina of use which is carried into other
> >> situations. A system of categories can perhaps be given heart if
> >> people struggle with the task of hacking it to describe, represent
> >> and explain things which it may not (yet) be fit to explain - so
> >> language comes to echo and resonate with the experiences of the people
> who use it - a kind of frohWian process (that's Whorf in reverse).
> >>
> >> All the best,
> >>
> >> Rod
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: xmca-l-bounces+rod.parker-rees=plymouth.ac.uk@mailman.ucsd.edu
> >> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+rod.parker-rees=plymouth.ac.uk@mailman.ucsd.ed
> >> u]
> >> On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> >> Sent: 17 July 2015 07:48
> >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> >> 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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