[Xmca-l] Re: Trump's speech and Perezhivanie

Sat Jan 21 20:48:56 PST 2017

Hello - 

I hope we pause and consider Alfredo’s suggestion.  Thank you, Alfredo for the phrase “gut feeling of true tragedy.” Can we work with that? 

How, given the xmca medium of long-chain texts from voices all over the world, would we carry out such a project? Let me see if I can say Alfredo’s proposal in my own words: to read Trump’s speech at his inauguration and ask, “Who could find this speech hopeful, inspiring, uplifting, comforting? Who would listen to it and think, ‘I am glad I voted for this man and I am glad he is my President.’”  But also ask, “Who could find this speech horrifying and frightening? This man Trump is lying to us all and I am sick to think that he is my President.” The social situation — like the alcoholic mother in the case with the three children each with a different perezvhanie - is the same for both people who are listening to the speech, but the people (like the children) respond differently.  

This sounds to me like a project for going out and finding strangers to talk with. Thank you, Greg, for bringing attention to Arlie Hochschild's book, Strangers in their Own Land. I have only read the first chapter of it, but I think this is what she is trying to do: give us insight into the person who might find the inauguration speech something other than a case of a celebrity clown practicing The Big Lie. 

Joe and I spent today at the Women’s March in Oakland, California. The police estimated 60,000 people there. Although there was supposed to be first a march and then a rally, there were too many people to fit into the streets between the starting point of the march and the destination, so many marchers never got to the end. However, that didn’t seem to be a problem. there were all kinds of small (200 person) gatherings going on all over the place. The mood was cheerful, mainstream, determined, friendly — tremendous variety of signs including the one that Peg saw in DC about regulating women’s bodies but not corporations. I actually feel better right now than I did yesterday at this time. There sure were a lot of us out there. So my perezvhanie has been expanded by a day on the street.

Helena

Helena Worthen
helenaworthen@gmail.com
Berkeley, CA 94707
Blog about US and Viet Nam: helenaworthen.wordpress.com

> On Jan 21, 2017, at 5:47 PM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Alfredo,
> I find this to be a fantastic suggestion.
> 
> One interesting analysis that helps us understand the circumstances/context
> in which many people experience Trump's speech as beautiful, even hopeful,
> is this book:
> http://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land
> 
> Democracy Now did a nice interview with her as well:
> https://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/28/what_drives_trump_supporters_sociologist_arlie
> 
> In the book (and the interview) Hochschild engages with, among others, the
> question of why someone who has had been directly deleteriously affected by
> the impact of fracking and oil production would support politicians who are
> against government regulation of those industries. She appears to deal with
> the situation very thoughtfully and compassionately, helping those of us
> who can't understand Trump supporters see how they might have a different
> experience of what Trump has to say.
> 
> Hopefully this doesn't take too far off track, but seems relevant to really
> consider the circumstances of Trump supporters in order to understand their
> experiences.
> 
> Just a thought.
> 
> -greg
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 6:29 PM, <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Alfredo,
>> I will share an impression I had as I listened to a particular group being
>> interviewed who were inspired by the Trump speech.
>> The group were ‘the biker’s for Trump’. I asked what symbolic form they
>> were inhabiting or living out? The answer i came up with was the modern
>> symbolic of being ‘On the Road Again’ and distancing from the perceived
>> limitations of social con/striction. Then Thelma and Louise came to mind.
>> Now how does this modern American cultural imaginary of being on the road
>> again  inter/sect with Trump’s speech.
>> Trump said now there is only the future. No doubling back. The form
>> changes, but there is a deeper (layered) imaginary being expressed that is
>> shared between the biker’s for Trump and Trump’s speech. This symbolic
>> (taking multiple forms) is profoundly anti-historical in rhetoric. It
>> creates ‘dramatic places’ in which people ‘fall into’ and become animated
>> and encouraged and re-enchanted and re-vitalized. There is a re/lease from
>> perceived constraints.
>> 
>> Alfredo, My impression watching the inauguration and the motivating
>> dramatic place Trump opens for some while sending a shudder down the spine
>> for others. The myth of escape from the shackles of history runs deep as a
>> symbolic imaginary that takes multiple ‘forms’ in the American dream.
>> 
>> This is only one quick pass through as an impression.
>> 
>> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
>> 
>> From: Alfredo Jornet Gil
>> Sent: January 21, 2017 12:46 PM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Trump's speech and Perezhivanie
>> 
>> Dear Helena, Andy, all,
>> 
>> 
>> Unfortunately, I have not been able to find the time to watch the movie
>> Fate of a Man, but I have followed the very interesting analyses and
>> conversations about it. I am opening this thread as connexions between
>> those analyses, perezhivanie, and current tragic social and political
>> situation in the US and elsewhere. This also connects with the article that
>> Mike shared on the position of the Learning Sciences with regard to this
>> situation (how happy I was to see this initiative!).
>> 
>> 
>> In particular, I wanted to pick up on Helena's very true comment 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."
>> 
>> 
>> Yesterday, we saw at home Trump's speech. Although we had followed Trump's
>> campaign and its denigrating tenor, it was yesterday, for the first time,
>> that my wife and me got this gut feeling of true tragedy, of a real *drama*
>> as we heard those empty, but to recover the prior article for discussion,
>> hollowed and hollowing words coming out of that mouth. It came upon us that
>> there may be lots of people for whom those words are not hollowed, but
>> actually encouraging, rich, beautiful. How can you hear that as beauty?
>> 
>> 
>> So, I was wondering, and in following up with our 2016 MCA Issue 4
>> discussion,  whether we could not actually conduct an analysis of the sort
>> Marc offers in his article of the perezhivanie. Just as Vygotsky explains
>> how 3 different children experience the situation of an alcoholic mother
>> differently, could not we perform an analysis ?of that perezhivanie in
>> which a person experiences yesterday's situation as one of encouragement,
>> of freedom and hope. Would that not be a way to try to understand what is
>> going on? This would not be a piece of art, but could be something we could
>> do to try to understand and change this situation.
>> 
>> We could then contrast that perezhivanie with the one many of as have, in
>> which the situation is experience as a real TRAGEDY. I think in the first
>> case, there is no hope for change, there is contempt; in the second,
>> hearing those words as hollowed and hollowing require that you live the
>> situation as a doubled situation in which you experienced it from a very
>> different developmental stage. One in which the speech sounds as a case of
>> involution.
>> 
>> Should we find the transcribed speech and perform such analysis?
>> 
>> 
>> Going now to support the Woman's march here in Victoria BC.
>> 
>> Alfredo
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 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