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

Tue Jan 24 09:02:02 PST 2017

I can’t remember who sourced The Twilight Zone on the chat lately, but it reminded me of the episode of Twilight Zone: The Movie wherein a household is hostage to a weird boy who is able to punish through his fantasies any pushback to his bullying. Does anyone remember that episode? And do they agree there is a frightening resonance? But there is a difference: In the episode, as I recall, no member of the household (except the boy) is a willing hostage. In our real world, the right, individually and collectively, is willingly submitting itself to the bullying. Enabling. How do we talk to them?
Henry

> On Jan 24, 2017, at 12:27 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <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=cx_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 Trump’s words. But if I
>> understand you correctly, I don’t agree that “in the first case, there is
>> no hope for change, there is contempt.”  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 Trump’s 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
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 