[Xmca-l] Re: A supplement to David's reflection on Translatability

[Glassman, Michael]

I think I disagree with this Martin.  The only reason we don't change the university is because we decide not to make the effort to change it.  Once you realize a problem and then you don't work to change it (the types of normalization that comes through specific, though widespread approaches to grading that almost always bring the students closer to the desires of the system) then I think the argument can be made that you are getting something from it.  If you are one of the oppressed what you get is a sense of belonging, if you are one of the oppressors then you are benefiting from the system (this is my interpretation of Friere).  Once you give up the system you have adopted by working to change it there is a possibility the system might change.  As one of my students said recently, Democracy and Education is not a how to book but a manifesto.

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 Martin John Packer
Sent: Saturday, January 02, 2016 12:46 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: A supplement to David's reflection on Translatability

I'm certainly not trying to suggest that MS lacks ethics!  On the contrary, I think his diagnosis of the university as generally an institution of normalization (in the sense of evaluating everyone, no matter their diverse abilities and backgrounds, against a single standard that derives from an elite) is an ethical diagnosis. My point is that if it is so hard to change the university even when one has a fair degree of power (MS is a named "distinguished service professor" in not one but three departments - anthropology, linguistics, and psychology - as well as member of the Committee on Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities), then this suggests that there is not much merit in pointing out the operation of power to (powerless) undergraduates!

Martin

On Jan 2, 2016, at 12:08 PM, Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, I'm not sure that this is what Larry's intent was, but it does 
> have obvious relevance.
> 
> It seems to me that one can "escape" normalisation, if one is ethical.
> Ethics are what defines a profession.  Without ethics we are merely 
> guns for hire.
> 
> Best,
> Huw
> 
> 
> On 2 January 2016 at 16:57, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Yes, I see the contradiction there. I had the same reaction when I 
>> first heard MS say it in his Language in Culture seminar (MS is not 
>> afraid to repeat himself, indeed, in his short manuscript on Abe 
>> Lincoln, he notes that the Gettysburg address had a long history in 
>> Abe's mouth and among his friends prior to being said in its canonical version).
>> 
>> If I may give the sympathetic reading, one might make the 
>> anthropological argument that one must fully inhabit an oppressive 
>> regime in order to understand it. Thus, using his Wizard of Oz 
>> metaphor, we might say that the position that MS is inhabiting is simultaneously Toto and the Wizard.
>> 
>> I think that this can provide the seeds of revolutionary action by 
>> exposing the workings of power to critique by others who can see 
>> those inner-workings but without having to fully participate in them.
>> 
>> [and perhaps this goes back to an older question I have about 
>> understanding a system from the "inside" as opposed to from the 
>> "outside" - or perhaps in a more Gadamerian sense we might just speak 
>> about these as two different horizons of understanding the system?].
>> 
>> -greg
>> 
>> On Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 9:34 AM, Martin John Packer < 
>> mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> No, my point was that one the one hand we have a call to be 
>>> "citizen-scientists" in the face of oppression, while on the other 
>>> hand
>> we
>>> have a confession that although the university is "at the highest
>> pinnacle
>>> of what you might call the oppressive regime" grading will continue 
>>> as usual.
>>> 
>>> If we can't change the very institution we work in, what kind of 
>>> citizen-scientists are we?
>>> 
>>> Martin
>>> 
>>> On Jan 2, 2016, at 11:10 AM, Greg Thompson 
>>> <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Martin,
>>>> I'm not clear on what the expectation was that the speakers were
>> setting
>>> up?
>>>> To pull back the curtain to reveal the role that language plays in
>> social
>>>> stratification?
>>>> You don't suppose that this can be found elsewhere in their work?
>>> ("their"
>>>> in the generic sense of "linguistic anthropologists' work").
>>>> Seems a tall order to fill in a single conversation between just 
>>>> two
>>> people.
>>>> -greg
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 6:52 AM, Martin John Packer <
>>> mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>>> Its only disappointing if you thought that anything else could 
>>>>>> come
>> out
>>>>> of
>>>>>> it.   Note that this was uttered in the context of ethics.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Best, Huw
>>>>> 
>>>>> But the speakers themselves set up this expectation! Here are the 
>>>>> remaining remarks:
>>>>> 
>>>>> MS: Yes, exactly. Indeed there are norms even of these other
>> components,
>>>>> these non-denotational components as we were saying. They're
>> understood
>>> in
>>>>> terms of a folk system of enrigisterment, but there's lots of 
>>>>> other variation as well that people are actually behaving in terms 
>>>>> of and
>>> working
>>>>> in terms of. But this one particular, massively complex system - 
>>>>> to
>>> which
>>>>> indeed the aspiration of working under the umbrella of 
>>>>> superdiversity responds - is indeed a complex one in which people 
>>>>> confuse standard register with normativity in the first place, and 
>>>>> they confuse
>> language
>>>>> with denotational structure. So all of these sorts of things that
>> we've
>>>>> taken decades and decades to pull apart, at least so that they 
>>>>> become visible to us as students of languaging, as it were get 
>>>>> collapsed into
>>> one.
>>>>> And most importantly and - as you pointed out - most tellingly, 
>>>>> they
>>> become
>>>>> instruments of oppression and stratification.
>>>>> 
>>>>> JB: At the individual level.
>>>>> 
>>>>> MS: At the individual level, through various kinds of
>> institutionalized
>>>>> forms so that you are summoned as a citizen-scientist to say: 
>>>>> 'Where
>> do
>>> I
>>>>> stand on using my knowledge to, as it were, maybe illuminate 
>>>>> people,
>>> maybe
>>>>> reveal what's going on.'
>>>>> 
>>>>> JB: At least show what's going on. That's the least we can do.
>>>>> 
>>>>> MS: That's the least we can do. There is a wonderful scene in the 
>>>>> 1939 Hollywood movie 'The Wizard of Oz' in which...
>>>>> 
>>>>> JB: 'The witch is dead'
>>>>> 
>>>>> MS: no no it's not that the witch is dead
>>>>> 
>>>>> JB: ...a hit a few weeks ago when Margaret Thatcher died
>>>>> 
>>>>> MS: that's a different story! Leave the Baroness out of this... 
>>>>> there
>>> is a
>>>>> wonderful scene in which Toto - the little dog of Dorothy - pulls
>> back a
>>>>> curtain when you see the mountebank, the snake-oil salesman, 
>>>>> working
>> the
>>>>> levers of the machine that's running this thing which supports
>>> [purports?]
>>>>> to be Oz. And we can certainly try to be that little Toto.
>>>>> 
>>>>> JB: So on that note thank you very very much, Michael.
>>>>> 
>>>>> MS: Well it's always a pleasure to talk to you guys!
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Jan 1, 2016, at 11:38 PM, Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On 2 January 2016 at 03:04, Martin John Packer <
>>> mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> It's a little disappointing that they oppressed their own
>> conversation
>>>>> at
>>>>>>> the following point, no?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Martin
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> MS [Michael Silverstein]:  I say to my students all the time: 
>>>>>>> 'now
>>> that
>>>>>>> I've revealed to you the entire massive machinery of
>> socio-linguistic
>>>>>>> oppression, of stratification around the standard and so on, 
>>>>>>> that
>> will
>>>>> not
>>>>>>> stop me from correcting your papers because my institution is at 
>>>>>>> the highest pinnacle of what you might call the oppressive regime'.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> JB [Jan Blommaert]: Absolutely. And at the same time - maybe 
>>>>>>> this
>>> could
>>>>> be
>>>>>>> a useful conclusion of this conversation - at the same time it
>> proves
>>>>> also
>>>>>>> that there is no absence of norms, there is no shortage of norms
>> even
>>>>> in a
>>>>>>> sociocultural organization of language. Normativity is everywhere.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Jan 1, 2016, at 9:16 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I decided to start a new thread because I did not want to shift 
>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>> focus that David's thread opened up on myth busting.
>>>>>>>> However, I do want to share a paper on the topic of 
>>>>>>>> translatability
>>> and
>>>>>>> the uses of standardization that does overlap somewhat with the
>> other
>>>>>>> thread.
>>>>>>>> The format is a conversation between Michael Silverstein, Jef 
>>>>>>>> Van
>> de
>>>>> Aa,
>>>>>>> and Jan Blommaert.
>>>>>>>> Entering this conversation exploring the notion of 
>>>>>>>> translatability
>>> as a
>>>>>>> culturally bound philosophical construct may have some relevance 
>>>>>>> for
>>> the
>>>>>>> other thread ongoing.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> <NOVEMBER 4 2014 390 BLOMMAERT and
>>> Silverstein_in_conversation.pdf>
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> 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
>>