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

Tue Jan 24 02:47:08 PST 2017

Katie Simpson found this interesting page which includes an 
extended essay by a young fellow explaining why he voted for 
Trump and excerpts from a subsequent conversation with his 
teacher:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/donald-trump-2016-election-oklahoma-working-class

Andy


------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making 

On 24/01/2017 9:39 PM, Susan Davis wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I am quite interested in the idea of collecting accounts of
> experiences from younger people and those with different views from our
> own. It
> made me think of a conversation I had with my son over the weekend, and his
> response to my sense of frustration.  While Martin
> suggests not only talking to family and friends, in terms of ethics and
> immediacy they may be easier to approach to begin with  especially if they
> don¹t hold views similar to our own.  I
> therefore include below some of what I recall of our conversation and some
> reflections upon it.  I also note with interest his use of the terms
> Œironic¹ and Œunironically¹ in terms of his perception of some of the
> people he knows who are Trump Œfollowers¹.
>
>   
> J¹s view  young adult male (Australian), a Œgamer¹, in his final year of
> school  interacts online with a global networks of other gamers,
> predominantly male
>
>   
> ³Your generation of social justice warriors don¹t get it. A
> lot of young people are sick of all the concern over the so-called
> Œdisadvantaged¹ people and sick of the political correctness. They think
> anyone
> could be disadvantaged depending on how you twist it, there can never be
> equality for all.
>   
> While as an individual I find him detestable I know people
> who follow him unironically as well as ironically.²
>
>   
> Q: What do you mean follow him ironically?
>
>   
> ³They are people who just follow him because they want to
> see what happens, they think it¹s funny.²
>
>   
> Q: So are you saying they are just after the spectacle?
>
>   
> ³It¹s like following the WWE (wrestling) people love it,
> they love the characters, but it¹s not serious. Some people follow him in
> that
> kind of way. He¹s a larger than life character. He creates chaos around
> him and
> they like to watch that.²
>
>   
> Q: And what about the people you say are following him
> unironically, what do you mean?
>
>   
> ³They¹re people who like the fact he is unapologetic and
> totally non-PC, so he¹s saying the things a lot of people think but could
> never
> get away with saying.  His political and
> economic ideas might be rubbish, but they like the fact he¹s saying Œup
> yours¹
> to the system.  Even though in the end he
> has to work through that system to get anything done.²
>
>   
> Some of my reflections Š.
> This identification of the significance of a form of
> Engagement (and perhaps lived Œemotional experience) that may appear to be
> flippant or shallow even, brought to mind
> Bakhtin¹s discussion of carnival  something I drew upon in my Masters
> work when
> attempting to understand some of the interactions involving young people on
> theInternet.
>
>   
> In searching for some means of trying to understand this fascination with
> the
> humorous, the grotesque and the profane being circulated on the Internet
> Bakhtin¹s work on ³folk humour and carnival
> laughter² seems to offer some parallels and insights.  Bakhtin¹s study
> explored the work of French
> writer Francois Rabelais (c.1494-1553) and the role of folk humour during
> the
> Middle Ages and the Renaissance.  What
> Bakhtin identified was that while historically the Œauthoritarian word¹ of
> the
> official realm (involving the church and recorded politics of the day) is
> generally that which is studied and explored, that there was a
> complementary
> and unofficial realm that existed alongside the official realm and that
> this
> culture, rooted in folk humour, laughter and carnival has been largely
> ignored
> and rarely studied:
>
>   
> ³A
> boundless world of humour forms and manifestations opposed the official and
> serious tone of medieval ecclesiastical and feudal culture.  In spite of
> their variety, folk festivities
> of the carnival type, the comic rites and cults, the clowns and fools,
> giants,
> dwarfs, and jugglers, the vast and manifold literature of parody  all
> these
> forms have one style in common:  they
> belong to one culture of folk carnival humour². (Bakhtin in Morris, 1994:
> 196)
>
>   
> Perhaps it
> is the case that the Internet and now the political sphere is the current
> space
> for the experience of carnival, in Bakhtin¹s discussion this was often
> outside
> the official realm, but now the distinctions seem to have disintegrated.
> What
> is of intriguing now is that through Trump many features of carnival have
> been
> drawn into what would historically be considered Œthe official realm¹. He
> adopts the persona, the language, the acts more characteristic of
> carnival,  introducing features of abuse,
> the grotesque and profanities not generally associated with the
> authoriatative
> order. He is certainly creating a spectacle that many people find deeply
> engaging (though not necessarily necessarily hopeful or profound) some
> find the spectacle deeply
> offensive but can¹t help watching, while other are quite enjoying the
> disruption
> and entertainment!
>
>
> (Sorry if the formatting of this is bit strange - I typed it elsewhere
> first)!
>
> I look forward to others thoughts and accounts.
>
> Sue.
>
>
> On 24/01/2017 5:27 pm, "xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of
> Alfredo Jornet Gil" <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of
> a.j.gil@iped.uio.no> wrote:
>
>> Another article exploring Trump's age:
>> http://elpais.com/elpais/2017/01/20/inenglish/1484911522_528712.html?rel=c
>> x_articulo#cxrecs_s
>>
>> Alfredo
>> ________________________________________
>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> on behalf of Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
>> Sent: 24 January 2017 08:03
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Trump's speech and Perezhivanie
>>
>> That would be interesting to explore, Mike. You suggest actually asking
>> how people from different ages and demographics and share it here? That
>> sounds doable!
>> Alfredo
>> ________________________________________
>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> on behalf of mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu>
>> Sent: 24 January 2017 00:54
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Trump's speech and Perezhivanie
>>
>> Martin's caution relates to my suggestion that we not restrict the same to
>> our families or students and friends. People experienced the Trump victory
>> in different ways. The example from LSV involves kids of three ages.  That
>> still seems an important focus. Our contemporaries are in there 30's +
>> (and
>> ++). Our students are in latest teens or 20+. High school kids are in the
>> teens. Middle school kids.....
>>
>> It is my strong impression that there are significant age differences in
>> ones experience of the event that could be elicited pretty easily and
>> compared in the group across other interesting categories of difference
>> such as nationality.
>>
>> A small, positive, collective effort?
>>
>> mike
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 23, 2017 at 9:08 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Martin,
>>>
>>> thanks for the nuances you introduce. Yes, I agree with you, it is
>>> totally
>>> sensible to hear Trump's words with hope and actually experience
>>> (perezhivat) them in such a way as to become moving force towards
>>> transformation. I was only approaching the speech from a developmental
>>> stages perspective, where, to hear the speech with contempt  given the
>>> speech's formal structure as a type of generalisation, would mean to
>>> hear
>>> them within that stage that Andy very appropriately (in my view) called
>>> as
>>> "magic". Vygotsky (I think) also used this term to refer to a stage in
>>> child development.
>>>
>>> But I do not wish to say that contempt is the only possible quality, and
>>> so, as you very nicely remark, hope, enthusiasm, empowerment, all these
>>> and
>>> their developmental and historical conditions should be considered as
>>> possibilities of hearing Trump's speech.
>>>
>>> Thanks a lot for the resources/links, I am incorporating them to our
>>> joint
>>> document.
>>> Alfredo
>>>
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>>> on behalf of Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
>>> Sent: 22 January 2017 16:08
>>> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Trump's speech and Perezhivanie
>>>
>>> Hi Alfredo.
>>>
>>> I think your proposal is very interesting; that we could explore two
>>> different ways of hearing and understanding Trump¹s words. But if I
>>> understand you correctly, I don¹t agree that ³in the first case, there
>>> is
>>> no hope for change, there is contempt.²  I have lived in Michigan and
>>> Pennsylvania, and in both states industries that were central to the
>>> economic rise of the working class, auto manufacturing and steel
>>> foundries,
>>> collapsed as a result of globalization. I have seen first hand some of
>>> the
>>> communities that were almost completely destroyed. I believe that people
>>> who experienced these changes do hear Trump¹s words with hope for
>>> change,
>>> and if they have contempt it is for professional politicians who they
>>> feel
>>> speak but do not act.
>>>
>>> But perhaps you mean it was a lack of hope that *led* people to Trump:
>>>
>>> <http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/
>>> donald-trump-manufacturing-jobs-hope/496541/>
>>>
>>> The New Yorker has published several articles by George Packer (no
>>> relation) on the appeal that Trump has to the white working class. For
>>> example:
>>>
>>> <http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/16/how-
>>> donald-trump-appeals-to-the-white-working-class>
>>>
>>> Martin
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jan 21, 2017, at 3:44 PM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no
>>> <mailto:a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>> wrote:
>>>
>>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>