[Xmca-l] Re: Fate of a Man

Thu Feb 9 13:50:33 PST 2017

For meta question I defer to Professor Roth himself.
(Included in this email).
Robert

On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 4:40 PM, <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> Beth, Robert, and the others forming a “(we)”.
>
> Beth said it is the “()” within the “()” that interests her [as being].
> Maybe Framing is ALL communication, ALL thought, ALL consciousness ....
> Bateson?.... but Beth thinks we need to tackle framing head on [face into]
> when discussing perezhivanie.
>
> Now I noticed that Wolff-Michael Roth included in the title of his book
> the phrase – mathematics of mathematics -  and my mind wondered to
> conjecture if this is going “meta” and if “()” is also going “meta”.
>
> Could Beth’s “()” as symbolic also have another aspect [or side] that is
> () = bracket and the doubling  “()” = bracketing the bracket.  These moves
> as examples of going “meta” which also plays with saying/not saying or
> revealing/concealing that Ed Wall recently posted when he said:
> The truth of the proposition, in effect, resides in the possibility of
> bringing its referents into the light (here is where aletheia takes a
> part); I.e. uncovering. That is, on the LEVEL of ‘apophantic as’ things are
> propositionally either true or false, but on the LEVEL of the ‘hermeneutic
> as’ they are neither.
>
> However, the ‘apophantic as’ IS (its being) grounded in interpretation,
> I.e. the ‘hermeneutic as’ (its being). For Heidegger (and this is an
> oversimplification) ‘hermeneutic truth’ IS in effect (in use) DISclosure.
> ..... complicated because if one surfaces [metaphor of LEVELS] to the
> apophantic then, in effect (in use) there is a covering back up
> (closure).... Also, and this is most important, the consequent would not be
> an understanding of Trump’s speech, but an understanding (interpreting) of
> how  “(I)” understand (interpret) Trump’s speech.
>
> I am travelling back and forth exploring saying as () generating effects
> IN USE, and then doubling back and exploring the () generating effects IN
> USE through “()” interpretation of the uses.  To go hear would have to
> bring in Umberto Eco who pleads for us to make a distinction between ‘use’
> and ‘interpretation’ AS aspects of semiosis and semiotic but this is for
> another turn.
>
> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
>
> From: Beth Ferholt
> Sent: February 5, 2017 6:38 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Fate of a Man
>
> Thanks for the calling out to Monica and me, Mike and Andy -- I had to stop
> checking XMCA for a couple of weeks so I did not see the discussion or your
> notes to me in the chain, until today.  One of the the strengths of XMCA is
> that it creates a conversation that can include people who can not always”
> respond that very day, or even week, due to various forms of interruption!
> Often these "interruptions" are children or political events, which canY
> help us to understand perezhivanie.
>
> As well as spending time at JFK, recently, many of us here in New York have
> been attending local protests to keep our neighborhoods feeling safe for
> everyone.  I live in a neighborhood in Brooklyn that includes several
> Muslim communities and several Jewish communities (as well as a few Russian
> and Polish communities), and at the local protests these past few weeks
> some people have had photographs of their family members who were killed by
> the Nazis attached to the back of their "never again" signs. Also we all,
> Muslim, Jewish, etc. families, have been often bringing  our children to
> the protests.
>
> So I have been thinking a lot about children and hope, during the past few
> weeks.  It is within this frame that I saw this film.  I think the film was
> expecting us to see the child as only benefitting from the main character's
> lying, saying that he was the child's father, and of course the child did
> benefit, but I think that perezhivanie is about truth, somehow, although I
> am not sure how.
>
> My second thought is that Manchester by the Sea must have been referencing
> this film, with its return-to-the-space-where-the-house-was scene, and
> also
> with the choice to replace the lost self (as father) / family or no.  I
> think it might help this conversation if we all saw both films, actually.
> Two thoughts on this methods suggestion for our conversation, before I
> return to the topic itself.
>
> 1) It is odd how closely the two films are related, as I did not know that
> the two films were related when I told Chris to see Manchester by the Sea
> in relation to thinking about perezhivanie.  I told Chris when I saw him in
> person, and I think that discussions about perezhivanie are often different
> in person.  We learned at LCHC in the 2004/5 playworld projects that these
> in person discussions about perezhivanie have a pronounced proleptic
> structure, mirroring the topic of study, such that the conclusion of the
> discussion appears at the start: It feels like magic is happening.  (I
> think this has something to do with how good teachers see the things in
> their classroom that are useful or no before they happen or "behind their
> heads" ... when you are very present you have this "sixth sense," which is
> really an experience of time moving in two directions at once ... being
> very present can often require a lot of in person time and being with
> children speeds up the process.)
>
> 2) It is a strength that the XMCA conversations can continue through all of
> our different schedules.  It is a negative that they are not in person, and
> seeing films together can really help.  This is where we went on the
> perezhivanie facebook page when it was briefly in English and in Russian --
> with a film, and it was very helpful.  (Of course I am thinking of this
> while considering the changing role and form of LCHC and Mike's
> participation in LCHC and XMCA.  I am thinking of the mistakes that are
> communication.  A story about this that I thought of recently, which shows
> this point well, and seems worth retelling BECAUSE when studying
> perezhivanie the form is often (always??) the study of the content: As a
> newish graduate student Mike once said "thank you" to me when I made a
> comment in the afternoon about an AM conversation that day.  Mike's "thank
> you" encouraged me to pay extra attention to this comment/thought of mine,
> which later became important in our analysis of a difficult-to-decipher
> playworld event.  I was thinking of this event as I walked and talked with
> a doctoral student of my own -- I seem to have a heavily spacial memory
> process and my student and I were walking through a doorway -- and I
> suddenly realized that Mike could have been thanking me for holding the
> door for him at this time in the past when his feedback was so important to
> me ... maybe he did not hear my comment, but just thanked me for holding
> the door ... in fact it now appears to me that this was probably the case!)
>
> The interesting thing to me about the above 2 points is the framing.  It IS
> the "()" within the "()" that interests me. Maybe Framing is all
> communication or all thought or consciousness ... Bateson? ... but I think
> we need to tackle framing head on when discussing perezhivanie.  The two
> films are very different in regards to framing, I think this is why they
> are most interesting to think about together, but first I have two
> citations for thinking about time that I use frequently in my writing on
> perezhivanie.
>
> These seem worth repeating here, as this thinking about time in space/time
> seems to me to be thinking about framing ... the "()" makes us double back
> in time as we read -- :
>
> (As to Performance, Alfredo copied the Schechner quote above.)
>
> Dewey's relation of the notion of object to prolepsis (on XMCA):
> Mike (2007) used the term “temporally double sided” to describe this
> phenomenon of growing back and towards the future and the past
> simultaneously.
>
> What I am (still) thinking about, now, most often:
> It is the juxtaposition of temporal double sidedness with stages that
> creates perezhivanie. What Schechner argues is that this juxtaposition
> provides the rhythm that allows us to raise ourselves up and hover,
> suspended momentarily in a state of being simultaneously ourselves and not
> ourselves: our past and future selves (someone else).
>
> So my first point is about framing and my second is about children.  The
> Fate Of Man is all about the frames / "()". The stories are nested within
> eachother, repeating themselves, maybe even sort of like a fractal, or
> anyhow a spiral?  I have some congenital prosopagnosia, getting worse as I
> age and definitely bad with a film like this.  I kept thinking we were back
> at the ferry as the form of the conversation and context images repeated
> themselves, as I could not recognize the face of the character who was the
> audience for our hero's story!  Manchester by the Sea, on the other hand,
> had no frames.  We just jumped right in and rode it through. I only saw
> Manchester once but do others think this is true? relevant?
>
> I think that the question of children's position in relation to adult
> perezhivanie is central in both of these films. The children in both of
> these films appear to want the main characters to try again at being
> fathers.  This is a critique of films about children -- I can not think of
> the name of the person who made this critique, but I can find it for anyone
> if needed -- : We adults often make films not about children but about our
> own childhoods.  We make films about children who are no longer with us.
> But is this really best for the films, as films are usually best when they
> are somehow in dialogue with their topic, this is a characteristic of the
> medium, no?
>
> If you do not have some pretense, some playing again, you can not have
> perezhivanie.  But I think that Fate of Man is not about perezhivanie,
> although in a different way than Manchester by the Sea is not about
> perezhivanie.  In Manchester by the Sea there is no other with whom to
> perezhivanie because the main character and his former wife still love each
> other, or at lease he still loves her and she returns enough of the love to
> keep him loving her, and neither of them can pull the other up because they
> both hit bottom together and in the same story.  In Fate of Man there is is
> no chance for perezhivanie because the other needs to be involved in some
> honest way, or there is no dialogue.
>
> In Fate of Man the hero seems to me to be playing out his memory in the
> real world.  A child is not an other with whom one can ever perezhivanie.
> This is not perezhivanie as there is no real world as a player, and this is
> why our hero's heart will fail him.  He did not reach bottom and then start
> to pull himself up by connecting with another with great bravery.  Instead,
> as he says himself, he just snapped -- he is now living in a dream.
>
> As Larry put it, above in this chain: "In other words, navigating through
> the suffering and existential emptiness is not a hero’s journey." And this
> point is relevant, again, to our method for studying perezhivanie.  I don't
> think we can manage this one on our own (XMCA), even as a group that allows
> for conversations over extended time periods.
>
> If form and content are related in this process, I'd say that we won't
> understand this process until we see children as full people.  And
> simultaneously as children.  Children have something to tell us about this
> process that no one else can tell us, and they are not going to tell us
> this in a way that those of us who are researchers/scholars can listen,
> without the bridge of the teacher voices.  How to include these voices in
> our research is key.  And the answer has something to do with art, as well
> as with time and space.
>
> I am going to send this as it is long enough already, and then catch up
> with the related chains after I do ... And I won't say more now, but I
> agree with all the people who thought this was a great pick to start the
> discussion.  Many levels to discuss and I also found many aspects of the
> film related to perezhivanie in many ways! Beth
>
> On Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 11:51 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
> > How about a documentary movie about the first Trump voter who dies as a
> > result of repeal of Obama Care? That would be a perezhivanie within a
> > perezhivanie!
> >
> > Andy
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > Andy Blunden
> > http://home.mira.net/~andy
> > http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> > On 21/01/2017 12:03 PM, Helena Worthen wrote:
> >
> >> I am late to this discussion, but I have been paying attention. I was
> >> reluctant to expose myself to the emotional challenges of the film. I
> knew
> >> that between the majestic music, the stunning black and white images,
> the
> >> beautiful human faces and bodies (and some very ugly ones), and the
> twists
> >> of the story, I was going to be deeply moved. However, I have been
> reading
> >> two books by Svetlana Alexievich -- Voices from Chernobyl and Secondhand
> >> Time - which tell equally heartbreaking, horrifying stories of
> suffering.
> >> Reading her work inclines me to place the film in the context of the
> period
> >> of deStalinization after Kruschev's 1956 speech to the 20th Congress of
> the
> >> CPSU, which gave the signal that it was permissible to begin to talk
> freely
> >> about Soviet history. It was a period of trying to build a story that
> could
> >> explain and honor, if not justify, the extreme suffering of the Soviet
> >> people. This film seems to me to set out to accomplish that. So does
> >> Alexievich's book, which is a compilation of interviews done between
> 1991
> >> and 2012, with people who had something to say (good and bad) about the
> >> Soviet regime and the experience of its dissolution. She got the 2015
> Nobel
> >> Prize for this book.  And I sense that Andy, or someone, is anticipating
> >> that the US is going to have to produce some works of scholarship or
> art,
> >> or both, that attempt to explain what is happening now here in the US --
> >> for example, this afternoon, under President Trump.
> >>
> >> Helena Worthen
> >> helenaworthen@gmail.com
> >> Vietnam blog: helenaworthen.wordpress.com
> >>
> >> On Jan 19, 2017, at 4:00 PM, Christopher Schuck wrote:
> >>
> >> For some reason I couldn't see the subtitles showing up in Fate of a Man
> >>> the first time, so I started to watch it dubbed in English instead. But
> >>> the
> >>> mannered Hollywood accents definitely were not exactly helping to
> convey
> >>> the "real Russian soul" Robbins talks about! It felt like I was being
> >>> asked
> >>> to imagine Cary Grant inhabiting Andrei's perezhivanie-ing body. So, I
> >>> started over with the subtitled version.
> >>>
> >>> Here are some quick initial reflections: wonderful movie, and in Andrei
> >>> one
> >>> of the more memorable characters I have seen. But I also found myself
> >>> thinking how big a difference there is between watching a film on my
> >>> 12-inch laptop with headphones (my only option at the moment), and
> >>> sitting
> >>> back and immersing yourself in a darkened theater or at least on a
> >>> widescreen TV without any other distractions, allowing ourselves to
> "fall
> >>> into this space" by virtue of our very awareness of the illusion
> >>> generated
> >>> by the frame, as Beth and Monica put it. This difference becomes even
> >>> bigger if the screen you're viewing it on also enables you to quickly
> >>> check
> >>> email from time to time during the movie, as many people do these days.
> >>> If
> >>> we are to consider the film experience as a model (analogy?) for
> >>> perezhivanie or even a certain kind of simulation of it, this effect
> that
> >>> occurs when we lose ourselves in a film would be undermined by an
> >>> especially small frame or poor viewing conditions. At what point does
> >>> "the
> >>> knowledge that the movement we experience is just an illusion" (p. 2 in
> >>> their article) undermine the perezhivanie-like quality of film as
> opposed
> >>> to forming an integral part of it? And, might the way distraction
> >>> functions
> >>> to undermine perezhivanie in the context of film in any way mirror how
> we
> >>> "distract" ourselves in the course of living lives from conscious
> >>> engagement with the perezhivanie we are otherwise undergoing? Is
> viewing
> >>> a
> >>> film on a 12-inch screen while checking email and calling it an
> >>> "experience" in any way analogous to the self-deceptions and escapes we
> >>> engage in during the course of either experience-as-struggle or
> >>> experience-as-contemplation? I did not check email while watching Fate
> >>> of a
> >>> Man, by the way. Just in case you're wondering.
> >>>
> >>> As for the film itself: I was struck by the incidental way in which the
> >>> earlier loss of his childhood family is introduced and acknowledged at
> >>> the
> >>> very outset, and how this contrasts with the dramatic ongoing
> >>> perezhivanie
> >>> that ensues going forward: it is as if this early loss is "taken for
> >>> granted" as also part of the Russian experience.  We are not privy to
> any
> >>> perezhivanie he might have presumably undergone before that point; it
> is
> >>> simply not "within the frame." At several points, I was reminded of
> >>> Satyajit's World of Apu (last movie in his trilogy), where there was
> >>> also a
> >>> set of early losses and a relationship formed with a "son." Have any of
> >>> you
> >>> seen it? I think it would also be a good example of perezhivanie.
> >>>
> >>> I would not want to overemphasize the use of literary motifs, since
> >>> Bondarchuk was presumably not making any references to the concept of
> >>> perezhivanie as such. But there were several devices that evoked Beth
> and
> >>> Monica's passage from To The Lighthouse ("Time stand still here"), and
> >>> their metaphor of a life (or more specifically, a perezhivanie within a
> >>> life) spiraling back over itself to bring two disparate moments into
> >>> juxtaposition in a way such that "your life becomes three-dimensional
> >>> again" (p. 2). One occurs in the various scenes when Andrei gazes up at
> >>> the
> >>> sky in reverie and all we see are clouds, or the scene where he lies in
> >>> the
> >>> grass after his first escape and the camera pans back as it becomes
> very
> >>> quiet, leaving nothing but him swallowed up in the vastness of nature.
> >>> There is a certain timeless quality to these scenes, a sense that he is
> >>> momentarily transcending the linear temporal flow of his life as he
> >>> either
> >>> stands outside it and "stands still" in it. It could be a thousand
> years
> >>> passing by in those clouds, or just the 17 years of his second phase;
> it
> >>> suddenly doesn't matter. Another thing I noticed was the use of the two
> >>> musical themes: the love song the accordionist plays for him and Irina,
> >>> and
> >>> the festive music incongruously piped in at the concentration camp
> during
> >>> that amazing scene around Part 1, minute 45 where the prisoners are
> being
> >>> marched in and the crematorium is going full blast down the road. At
> some
> >>> point (I couldn't relocate it) Andrei has a flashback where he revisits
> >>> the
> >>> love song and his memories of Irina; then at minute 20 in Part 2, while
> >>> processing his family's death after coming home from the war, he finds
> >>> himself hearing the concentration camp song on the record player and is
> >>> suddenly transported back to that traumatic experience. Yet he does not
> >>> smash the record right away; he stares at it for a minute, almost as if
> >>> he
> >>> is resituating these two moments in relation to each other.
> >>>
> >>> Perhaps I am overanalyzing, but I found both these motifs to speak to
> >>> Beth
> >>> and Monica's examples in the way they bring two moments back into
> contact
> >>> with each other.
> >>>
> >>> Finally, Mike and Andy's discussion in the Misha thread about the
> >>> watching
> >>> of a film functioning as perezhivanie for those viewers for whom it
> >>> reflects and repeats their own experience, raises a question about the
> >>> difference between extended perezhivanie and the personal re-enactment
> of
> >>> one's perezhivanie within a much smaller time scale (the two or three
> >>> hours
> >>> spent watching the movie). I hope at some point we could delve more
> into
> >>> this issue of time frame and time scale in various forms of
> perezhivanie.
> >>>
> >>> Chris
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 8:39 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Thank you Marc! It was the third "plane" which was my intention in
> >>>> providing "Fate of a Man" for discussion. You picked out what were for
> >>>> me
> >>>> also the main (but by no means the only) instances of perezhivanija in
> >>>> this
> >>>> movie.
> >>>>
> >>>> It seems to me that Sokolov (the author) offers one perezhivanie in
> >>>> particular as the main theme of the movie. At the beginning of the
> >>>> movie,
> >>>> the man and boy walk up the path to the camera and at the end of the
> >>>> movie
> >>>> they walk off together again. So this is the central theme. As you
> say,
> >>>> when Sokolov's family has all been killed, even his talented war-hero
> >>>> son
> >>>> who was going to be a famous mathematician, his life has become
> >>>> meaningless. I really liked your reflections of Sokolov's reflections
> >>>> too.
> >>>> He sees the young orphan boy who, he discovers, has no family and
> >>>> doesn't
> >>>> even know what town he comes from, but is aimlessly living on pieces
> of
> >>>> rubbish. He sees that the two of them are in the same situation. So
> >>>> after
> >>>> some time mulling this over a they sit together in the truck, he lies
> to
> >>>> the boy and tells him that he is the boy's father, and they embrace.
> But
> >>>> the boy questions this and he reasserts his claim and the boy accepts
> >>>> this.
> >>>> The man is able to define a new meaning for his life; he has done this
> >>>> autonomously without the help of a therapist, but he still needs
> >>>> another,
> >>>> the boy, to embody that meaning. But he knows it is his own invention.
> >>>> The
> >>>> boy on the other hand has to be made to believe it is true; he is not
> >>>> sufficiently mature to manufacture this meaning himself, but as a
> child
> >>>> he
> >>>> can be guided by an adult. As you say, Marc, it is very significant
> when
> >>>> Sokolov tells us how he is now, again, worried about his own death.
> >>>> What if
> >>>> I died in my sleep? that would be a shock for my son!
> >>>>
> >>>> For me, this reflection causes me to look back on the man's whole
> >>>> struggle
> >>>> during the war: in the first phase he does not differentiate between
> his
> >>>> life as a father and husband and his life as a Soviet citizen - war is
> >>>> his
> >>>> duty and he is confident, as is everyone else, of victory. His bravery
> >>>> in
> >>>> driving his truck to the front line under fire reflects the fact that
> he
> >>>> has never imagined his own death. Then he finds himself prostrate
> >>>> before 2
> >>>> Nazi soldiers who we assume are going among the wounded shooting
> anyone
> >>>> who
> >>>> has survived. But surprisingly, he is allowed to live, but is to be
> >>>> used as
> >>>> a slave. Sokolov has been confronted by his own mortality for the
> first
> >>>> time and he chooses life, but accepts slavery (Sartre and Hegel both
> >>>> thematize this moment in their philosophy). In this second phase of
> >>>> Sokolov's life he is a survivor. Everything hinges on surviving and
> >>>> returning to his wife and family. As you point out, Marc, his later
> >>>> reflections on this are particularly poignant, when he discovers the
> >>>> futility of this hope. Eventually, the life of forced labour becomes
> >>>> unbearable. He cries out: "Why are we forced to dig 3 cubic metres
> when
> >>>> 1
> >>>> cubic meter is enough for a grave!" Sokolov has accepted and embraced
> >>>> death
> >>>> after all. (Transition to the third phase.) To his German masters this
> >>>> is
> >>>> an unendurable act of defiance. As David points out, there are flaws
> in
> >>>> the
> >>>> scene which follows, but ... he confronts his own death defiantly,
> >>>> stares
> >>>> it in the eye, spits on it, and his life again gains meaning as a
> "brave
> >>>> Soviet soldier" unafraid of death even in such an impossible moment.
> Not
> >>>> only does he survive, but takes the Nazi Colonel prisoner and hands
> the
> >>>> war
> >>>> plans over to the Red Army. Now, when he is offered the chance to
> >>>> return to
> >>>> his wife as a war hero he declines and asks to be sent back to the
> >>>> front.
> >>>> His life has adopted this new meaning which casts his life as a father
> >>>> into
> >>>> the shade. He no longer fears death. But he is persuaded to take time
> >>>> off
> >>>> and learns of the death of his family. As Marc relates, the continued
> >>>> survival of his son, who is now also a war hero, provides continued
> >>>> meaning
> >>>> and integrates the two themes in his life. This takes work, as Marc
> >>>> points
> >>>> out, and he has the assistance of an older man, in achieving this
> >>>> redefinition of his life. But tragically, with the death of his son
> >>>> (and NB
> >>>> the end of the war, albeit in victory) his life is again without
> >>>> meaning.
> >>>> Fourth phase. He has survived, but has no purpose. By becoming a
> father
> >>>> again (Fifth phase), he regains the fear of death and meaning in his
> >>>> life.
> >>>> It is real work, and we witness this psychological turmoil as he copes
> >>>> with
> >>>> the idea that this scruffy orphan boy could be a son to him, and
> >>>> eventually
> >>>> he manages it.
> >>>>
> >>>> The transition between each phase is a critical period during which
> >>>> Sokolov's personality is transformed. Note also, that there is a
> >>>> premonition of this perezhivanie in Sokolov's earlier life: his family
> >>>> is
> >>>> wiped out in the Civil War and the famine of 1922, then he meets his
> >>>> wife-to-be, also raised in an orphanage, and they together create a
> life
> >>>> and have 17 happy years before the Nazi invasion intrudes. So from the
> >>>> beginning of the movie we are introduced to the main theme.
> >>>>
> >>>> These are the main moments in the movie, which caused me to select it
> >>>> for
> >>>> discussion rather than any other movie. Also, there is no doubt that
> in
> >>>> producing this movie in 1958 the Soviet government was engaged with
> its
> >>>> people, in a process of collective perezhivanie and by reflecting on
> the
> >>>> collective perezhivanie during the period of the war, before and
> after,
> >>>> they aim to assist the people in collectively assigning meaning to
> this
> >>>> terrible suffering and like the man and his "son" walking again into
> the
> >>>> future. As a propaganda movie, of course, it is open to much
> criticism,
> >>>> but
> >>>> that is hardly the point. I appreciate Marc's analysis in terms of the
> >>>> other concepts he has introduced. I wouldn't mind a recap on these. In
> >>>> terms of Vasilyuk's concepts, Sokolov's life-world is *simple and
> >>>> difficult*. The boy's life world is *simple and easy*.
> >>>>
> >>>> Can we continue to discuss "Fate of a Man", while I open another movie
> >>>> for
> >>>> analysis? I think there are at least 10 subscribers to this list who
> >>>> have
> >>>> published in learned journals on the topic of perezhivanie in
> childhood.
> >>>> Perhaps one of you would like to reflect on the boy's perezhivanija?
> >>>>
> >>>> Andy
> >>>>
> >>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>> Andy Blunden
> >>>> http://home.mira.net/~andy
> >>>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> >>>> On 18/01/2017 5:14 AM, Marc Clarà wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Hi, all,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> and thank you, Andy, for sharing this amazing film, which I didn't
> >>>>> know. I
> >>>>> think it will be very useful to share and discuss our respective
> views
> >>>>> on
> >>>>> perezhivanie.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> In my view, the film could be analyzed in terms of perezhivanie in
> >>>>> three
> >>>>> different planes. First, we could consider the person who watches the
> >>>>> film,
> >>>>> and we could study how the meaning she forms for the film
> restructures
> >>>>> her
> >>>>> relationship with aspects of her real life -such as, for example, her
> >>>>> own
> >>>>> death or the death of a beloved one, etc. (perhaps this is a little
> bit
> >>>>> like what Beth and Monica, or Veresov and Fleer, do with their study
> of
> >>>>> playworlds?). In this plane, which would be perhaps the most
> >>>>> naturalistic
> >>>>> one, the film could be studied as an human-made cultural artifact
> which
> >>>>> restuctures psychological functions; here, the meaning formed for the
> >>>>> film
> >>>>> by who watches it and uses it as mediator in her relation to her real
> >>>>> life
> >>>>> would be an m-perezhivanie.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> In a second plane, we could proceed as if the film was real life, and
> >>>>> we
> >>>>> could consider Sokolov telling his story to the man he meets by the
> >>>>> river
> >>>>> (a little bit like Carla telling her story to me). In this plane,
> >>>>> Sokolov's
> >>>>> narrative (i.e., what is showed to us as narrated flashback) could be
> >>>>> considered as a cultural artifact that Sokolov uses to relate to all
> >>>>> what
> >>>>> happened to him. At this plane, the meaning of this narrative would
> be
> >>>>> the
> >>>>> m-perezhivanie that, in that moment, mediates the relationship
> between
> >>>>> Sokolov and the war events he experienced years ago (but these events
> >>>>> are
> >>>>> still very present to him, so although relating to past events, there
> >>>>> is
> >>>>> here a Sokolov's activity [towards the past war events] which is in
> >>>>> present
> >>>>> -this echoes Christopher when, within our conversations, said: “Part
> of
> >>>>> this might also be a question of what it means to describe and
> >>>>> represent
> >>>>> one's own perezhivanie figuratively/narratively (whether to others,
> or
> >>>>> to
> >>>>> oneself), as opposed to living that perezhivanie. Especially if the
> >>>>> attempt
> >>>>> to capture/represent one's own perezhivanie is, perhaps, also central
> >>>>> to
> >>>>> the living of it?”
> >>>>>
> >>>>> In a third plane, we could proceed as if Sokolov's narration was not
> a
> >>>>> retrospective narration, but the on-time sequence of events with
> >>>>> on-time
> >>>>> Sokolov's explanation of these events (in the moments in which the
> >>>>> narrator
> >>>>> voice is assumed within the flashback). In this plane, there are
> >>>>> several
> >>>>> interesting perezhivanie phenomena. Clearly, there is a Sokolov's
> >>>>> activity
> >>>>> of experiencing-as-struggle, which initiates when he realizes that
> all
> >>>>> his
> >>>>> family, except one son, had been killed 2 years ago. At this moment,
> >>>>> his
> >>>>> life becomes meaningless; the meaning (m-perezhivanie) he uses to
> >>>>> relate
> >>>>> to
> >>>>> all his life (including the past) at this moment is expressed in his
> >>>>> conversation with his oncle: “it's got to be that this life of mine
> is
> >>>>> nothing but a nightmare!”. In this moment, Sokolov's past in the
> >>>>> prision
> >>>>> camp becomes also meaningless: then, his link to life (the
> >>>>> m-perezhivanie
> >>>>> that made being alive meaningful to him) was meeting his family; but
> at
> >>>>> that time his family was already dead, so when he discovers it, he
> >>>>> realizes
> >>>>> that this m-perezhivanie (the idea of meeting his family) was linking
> >>>>> him
> >>>>> to death, not to life, so all his efforts to surviving become
> >>>>> meaningless:
> >>>>> “Every night, when I was a prisioner, I talked with them. Now it
> turns
> >>>>> out
> >>>>> that for two years I was talking with the dead?”. In this
> conversation,
> >>>>> however, his oncle offers him an alternative m-perezhivanie to relate
> >>>>> to
> >>>>> his life: he still has a son, so the m-perehivanie of meeting his
> >>>>> family
> >>>>> can still turns Sokolov's life meaningful: “you've got to go on
> living.
> >>>>> You
> >>>>> have to find Anatoly. When the war is over, your son will get
> married,
> >>>>> you
> >>>>> will live with them. You will take up your carpentry again, play with
> >>>>> your
> >>>>> grandkids”. It takes some time to Sokolov to enter into this
> >>>>> m-perezhivanie, but he does it and his life becomes meaningful again:
> >>>>> “and
> >>>>> then, unexpectedly, I've got a gleam of sunlight”. But, then, Anatoly
> >>>>> also
> >>>>> dies. How to keep living? Here, Sokolov holds the m-perezhivanie that
> >>>>> linked him to life until that moment, and therefore, he needs a son;
> >>>>> pretending being the father of Vanya turns his life meaningful again.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Another interesting thing, still at that level, is how Sokolov's
> >>>>> relation
> >>>>> with his own immediate death changes along the different occasions in
> >>>>> which
> >>>>> he faces it. I thing here there are examples of
> >>>>> experiencing-as-contemplation -in my view, this is not
> >>>>> experiencing-as-struggle because the situation of impossibility (the
> >>>>> immediate death) is removed existentially (Sokolov's life is given
> >>>>> back to
> >>>>> him), so that there is not a permanent situation of impossibility
> >>>>> which is
> >>>>> initially meaningless and is turned into meaningful. In each occasion
> >>>>> in
> >>>>> which Sokolov is faced with his immediate death, the m-perezhivanie
> >>>>> that
> >>>>> mediates this relationship is different. When he is captured, his
> >>>>> m-perezhivanie is expressed as: “here's my death coming after me”.
> >>>>> When he
> >>>>> is conducted to meet the nazi official, the m-perezhivanie is
> expressed
> >>>>> as:
> >>>>> “the end of your misery”, “to my death and my release of this
> torment,
> >>>>> I
> >>>>> will drink”. In the first, the death is running after Sokolov; in the
> >>>>> second, it is Sokolov happily going to meet death. Later, at the end
> of
> >>>>> the
> >>>>> film, he faces his immediate death again, and the m-perezhivanie is
> >>>>> expressed as: “I'm really worried that I might die in my sleep, and
> >>>>> that
> >>>>> would frighten my little son”.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Well, just some thoughts after watching this wonderful film.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Best regards,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Marc.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 2017-01-15 0:06 GMT+01:00 Christopher Schuck <
> schuckcschuck@gmail.com
> >>>>> >:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Yes, definitely that article! And specifically, when I used
> "pivoting"
> >>>>> I
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> couldn't help but think of Beth's earlier example about how a child
> >>>>>> will
> >>>>>> use a stick as a pivot for a horse. Perhaps a somewhat different
> >>>>>> application but related, no?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 4:06 PM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <
> >>>>>> a.j.gil@iped.uio.no
> >>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Chris, all,
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> your post is totally relevant to Beth's and Monica's article in the
> >>>>>>> special issue. They write about film and perezhivanie (quoting
> >>>>>>> Sobchack)
> >>>>>>> the following:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> The reason that film allows us to glimpse the future is that there
> >>>>>>> is a
> >>>>>>> connection between filmic time and ‘real’ time: “The images of a
> film
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> exist
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> in the world as a temporal flow, within finitude and situation.
> >>>>>>> Indeed,
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> the
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> fascination of the film is that it does not transcend our
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> lived-experience
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> of temporality, but rather that it seems to partake of it, to share
> >>>>>>> it”
> >>>>>>> (1992, p. 60).
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> And later
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> "Specifically, the way that the flow of time becomes
> >>>>>>> multidirectional is
> >>>>>>> that “rehearsals make it necessary to think of the future in such a
> >>>>>>> way
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> as
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> to create a past” (1985, p. 39). As Schechner ex-plains: “In a very
> >>>>>>> real
> >>>>>>> way the future – the project coming into existence through the
> >>>>>>> process
> >>>>>>> of
> >>>>>>> rehearsal – determines the past: what will be kept from earlier
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> rehearsals
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> or from the “source ma-terials” (1985, p. 39)."
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Alfredo
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> ________________________________________
> >>>>>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.e
> >>>>>>> du>
> >>>>>>> on behalf of Christopher Schuck <schuckcschuck@gmail.com>
> >>>>>>> Sent: 14 January 2017 21:43
> >>>>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> >>>>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Fate of a Man
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> But that's both the limitation and strength of art or fictional
> >>>>>>> narrative
> >>>>>>> as opposed to real life, isn't it? That art focuses our attention
> and
> >>>>>>> highlights certain features in a way that is idealized and
> >>>>>>> artificially
> >>>>>>> "designed" to convey something more clearly and purely (but less
> >>>>>>> organically and authentically) than it would be conveyed in the
> >>>>>>> course
> >>>>>>> of
> >>>>>>> living it, or observing someone else living it? One way to get
> around
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> this
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> would be, as David says, to analyze the film in terms of clues as to
> >>>>>>> the
> >>>>>>> stages of emergence. But maybe another way to use the film would be
> >>>>>>> to
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> view
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> it not so much as a complete, self-sufficient "example" of
> >>>>>>> perezhivanie,
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> as
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> a *tool *for pivoting back and forth between the concept of
> >>>>>>> perezhivanie
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> as
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> imaginatively constructed (through fiction), and the concept of
> >>>>>>> perezhivanie as imaginatively constructed (through our real living
> >>>>>>> experience and observation of it). So, it would be the *pivoting*
> >>>>>>> between
> >>>>>>> these two manifestations of the concept (designed vs. evolved, as
> >>>>>>> David
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> put
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> it) that reveals new insights about perezhivanie, rather than
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> understanding
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> the concept from the film per se.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 3:08 PM, David Kellogg <
> dkellogg60@gmail.com
> >>>>>>> >
> >>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I think there's a good reason why Andy started a new thread on
> this:
> >>>>>>> he's a
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> very tidy thinker (quite unlike yours truly) and he knows that one
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> reason
> >>>>>>> why xmca threads are seldom cumulative is that they digress to
> >>>>>>> related
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> problems without solving the immmediate ones.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Yes, of course, a film allows us to consider an example of
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> "perezhivanie",
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> but it is a designed perezhivanie rather than an evolved one; it
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> doesn't
> >>>>>>> explicitly display the various stages of emergence required for a
> >>>>>>> genetic
> >>>>>>> analysis, unless we analyze it not as a complete and finished work
> of
> >>>>>>> art
> >>>>>>> but instead for clues as to the stages of its creation (the way
> that,
> >>>>>>> for
> >>>>>>> example, "Quietly Flows the Don" was analyzed to determine its
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> authenticity).
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> I remember that In the original short story, the schnapps drinking
> >>>>>>>> scene seemed like pure sleight of hand: an artistically gratuitous
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> example
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> of what eventually gave Soviet social realism such a bad name.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> David Kellogg
> >>>>>>>> Macquarie University
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 10:04 PM, Carol Macdonald <
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> carolmacdon@gmail.com
> >>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Fellow XMCa-ers
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> I have watched it through now, thank you Andy, but right now only
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> empirical
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> psychological categories come to mind.  I will watch it again and
> in
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> the
> >>>>>>>> meanwhile let my fellows with more recent experience of
> >>>>>>>> /perezhivanie/
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> take
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> the discussion further.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> It is a kind of timeless story, and modern film techniques would
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> perhaps
> >>>>>>>> be
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> more explicit. At the least I would say it has for me a Russian
> >>>>>>>>> understanding of suffering, perhaps because of their unique
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> experience
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> of
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> it. But having said that, WWII must have generated other similar
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> experiences, apart from the first part about Andrei's family
> dying
> >>>>>>>>> in
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> the
> >>>>>>>> famine.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Carol
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> On 14 January 2017 at 02:15, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> >>>>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> I watched it in two parts with subtitles:
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16w7fg_destiny-of-a-man-
> >>>>>>>>>> 1959-pt-1_creation
> >>>>>>>>>> http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16wat4_destiny-of-a-man-
> >>>>>>>>>> 1959-pt-2_creation
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> Andy
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>>>>>>> Andy Blunden
> >>>>>>>>>> http://home.mira.net/~andy
> >>>>>>>>>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> decision-making
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> On 14/01/2017 2:35 AM, Beth Ferholt wrote:
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Thank you for taking us to a shared example.  I think that
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>> having a
> >>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>> --
> >>>>>>>>> Carol A Macdonald Ph.D (Edin)
> >>>>>>>>> Cultural Historical Activity Theory
> >>>>>>>>> Honorary Research Fellow: Department of Linguistics, Unisa
> >>>>>>>>> alternative email address: tmacdoca@unisa.ac.za
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
> --
> 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
> Phone: (718) 951-5205
> Fax: (718) 951-4816
>
>

-- 
Robert Lake  Ed.D.
Associate Professor
Social Foundations of Education
Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Georgia Southern University
P. O. Box 8144, Statesboro, GA  30460
Secretary/Treasurer-AERA- Paulo Freire Special Interest Group
Webpage: https://georgiasouthern.academia.edu/RobertLake*Those who have
never despaired have neither lived nor loved. Hope is inseparable from
despair. Those of us who truly hope make despair a constant companion whom
we outwrestle every day owing to our commitment to justice, love, and hope* (
Cornel West, 2008, p. 185).