[Xmca-l] Re: Playworlds, Performance, Perezhivanie, Apophasis ... and TRUMP'S speech!

Mon Feb 6 11:35:05 PST 2017

There would seem to be several different ways of interpreting Trump's
actions in the Huff Post article. One I see as involving the specifically
*ironic* tension between what is formally disowned in the statement and
what is obviously being intended and made manifest in the act of mentioning
it. In the examples described, this would function to emphasize the obvious
truth and importance of the charge, and the futility of hiding it. The
comment by Jon Favreau toward the end of the article suggests an even
cruder version, in which Trump is not being ironic so much as just being a
bully ("another version of when my little brother used to hold his finger
within an inch of my face and say, “Not touching you!”), where the gap
between the insult and the disowning of the insult is so tiny that it's
basically just a form of intimidation. In both these cases, there doesn't
seem to be all that much that is hidden or unsaid; it's all pretty
transparent and blatant. Finally, the explanation given by the Huff Post
writer -- that Trump is sneaking in the taboo subject by planting it in
listener's minds without coming off as directly making the accusation, as a
form of subterfuge and manipulation -- might be more in line with the
meaning of apophasis that has been discussed.

Chris

On Sun, Feb 5, 2017 at 1:49 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
wrote:

> Henry,
>
> I guess for the cartoon to be about apophansis, Trump's speech would have
> to present itself to Trump's supporters as two opposed things
> *simultaneously*, but then perhaps this no longer would be *genuine*
> speech, in the sense Heidegger's treatment of Aristotle suggests. Trump's
> speech would be rather *deceiving,* i.e., "putting something in front of
> something else ... and thereby passing it off *as* something it is *not*".
>
> Cognitive dissonance seems to  imply there is some processing between the
> said (logos) and its showing of itself *as* something, which would not fit
> well Heidegger... In any case, as the cartoon nicely illustrates, Trumps'
> supporters may be having a hard time too, it can't be easy.
>
> Alfredo
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Wolff-Michael Roth <wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com>
> Sent: 05 February 2017 02:22
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Cc: Wolff-Michael Roth
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Playworlds, Performance, Perezhivanie, Apophasis ...
> and TRUMP'S speech!
>
> When you have a question about a concept, look up where it is defined.
> Michael
>
> Heidegger, 1996, pp. 28–29
> Rather, logos as speech really means *deloun*, to make manifest "what
> is being talked about" in speech. Aristotle explicates this function of
> speech more precisely as *apophainesthai*. Logos lets something be seen
> (*phainesthai*), namely what is being talked about, and indeed for the
> speaker (who serves as the medium) or for those who speak with each
> other. Speech "lets us see," from itself, *apo*. . . , what is being talked
> about. In speech (*apophansis*), insofar as it is genuine, what is said
> should
> be derived from what is being talked about. In this way spoken commu-
> nication, in what it says, makes manifest what it is talking about and
> thus makes it accessible to another. Such is the structure of logos as
> apophansis.
> Not every "speech" suits *this* mode of making manifest, in the
> sense of letting something be seen by indicating it. For example,
> requesting
> (*euche*) also makes something manifest, but in a different way.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> --------------------
> Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne Professor
> Applied Cognitive Science
> MacLaurin Building A567
> University of Victoria
> Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2
> http://web.uvic.ca/~mroth <http://education2.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/>
>
> New book: *The Mathematics of Mathematics
> <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new-
> directions-in-mathematics-and-science-education/the-
> mathematics-of-mathematics/>*
>
> On Sat, Feb 4, 2017 at 4:50 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Alfredo,
> > Would the attached link be an example of apophasis? I hope the link gets
> > you the cartoon from Daily Kos on Feb 1, which illustrates the "cognitive
> > dissonance of Trump supporters”.
> >
> > http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/2/1/1628099/-
> > Cartoon-Trump-supporters-cognitive-dissonance?detail=
> > email&link_id=15&can_id=d9825820685b26308482b9b5c5bb09
> > 5d&source=email-trump-reportedly-tells-female-staffers-to-dress-like-
> > womentwitter-says-fun&email_referrer=trump-reportedly-
> > tells-female-staffers-to-dress-like-womentwitter-says-
> > fun___162460&email_subject=news-organizations-and-
> > festivities-begin-pulling-out-of-annual-correspondents-dinner-with-trump
> <
> > http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/2/1/1628099/-
> > Cartoon-Trump-supporters-cognitive-dissonance?detail=
> > email&link_id=15&can_id=d9825820685b26308482b9b5c5bb09
> > 5d&source=email-trump-reportedly-tells-female-staffers-to-dress-like-
> > womentwitter-says-fun&email_referrer=trump-reportedly-
> > tells-female-staffers-to-dress-like-womentwitter-says-
> > fun___162460&email_subject=news-organizations-and-
> > festivities-begin-pulling-out-of-annual-correspondents-
> dinner-with-trump>
> >
> > Henry
> >
> >
> > > On Feb 3, 2017, at 11:20 PM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Larry,
> > > I am familiar with the term apophantic (the auto-spelling keeps
> > correcting the term to "hipophatic" which is the term you use) as it
> > appears in Heidegger. Not sure now about the connection with Vygotsky
> that
> > you are after; it seems quite of a complex thread to weave across, at
> least
> > in the xmca format.
> > >
> > > But!, since I wanted to make sure we were using the same term, I did
> > google it and, guess what I found? An example of apophasis as used by
> > TRUMP!:
> > >
> > > In 2015, Trump said of fellow Republican presidential candidate and
> > former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, "I promised I would not say
> that
> > she ran Hewlett-Packard into the ground, that she laid off tens of
> > thousands of people and she got viciously fired. I said I will not say
> it,
> > so I will not say it."In 2016, he tweeted of journalist Megyn Kelly, “I
> > refuse to call [her] a bimbo, because that would not be politically
> > correct."
> > >
> > > Here is the link to the full article from the Huffington post:
> > > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-rhetorical-device_us_
> > 56c358cbe4b0c3c55052b32b
> > >
> > > Alfredo
> > > ________________________________________
> > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> >
> > on behalf of lpscholar2@gmail.com <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
> > > Sent: 02 February 2017 18:15
> > > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > > Subject: [Xmca-l]  Playworlds, Performance, Perezhivanie, Apophasis
> > >
> > > Beth and Monica explore the phenomena occurring in playworlds
> generating
> > perezhivanie.
> > >
> > > Playworlds are performance worlds and these worlds may be exploring the
> > relation of ‘unity’ and ‘difference’.
> > >
> > > Another term that may have relevance when Beth and Monica refer to
> > negating the negation is the operation of ‘apophasis’.
> > >  William Frank (On What Cannot Be Said) describes the apophatic :
> > >
> > > *In apophasis, which empties language of all positive content, absolute
> > difference cannot be distinguished from absolute unity, even though the
> > respective discourses of difference and unity nominally stand at the
> > antipodes. BOTH configurations, unity and difference, are exposed as
> > relatively arbitrary and, in the end, equally inadequate schemas for
> > articulating what cannot be said. (Franke)
> > >
> > > Claire Chambers in her book (Performance Studies and Negative
> > Epistemology) comments on the above Franke citation :
> > >
> > > *If unity and difference cannot be distinguished from one another (we
> > cannot KNOW what makes them distinct), then it is impossible to determine
> > what either ‘is’ – meaning that knowing and being, epistemology and
> > ontology, are also impossible to distinguish from one another.(Claire
> > Chambers Chapter 1)
> > >
> > > I am not sure how far to go with this theme of : Negating the negation?
> > > I hear this theme in playworlds.
> > >
> > > If this seems relevant, i can post the first chapter of Claire Chambers
> > book. I will just mention that Vygotsky’s Judaic childhood and
> adolescence
> > would have encountered this apophatic ‘tradition’.
> > > Enough for one probe or possible pivot?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Sent from my Windows 10 phone
> > >
> >
> >
>