[Xmca-l] Moving on, new MCA article discussion ahead

[Alfredo Jornet Gil]

Dear all,


the discussion on the MCA issue on perezhivanie has now faded off, but it has been a most intense (at least to me) xmca experience?. We were privileged to count with the participation of many of the authors involved, in addition to Marc's as author of the main article, and to be able to discuss many issues that otherwise are impossible to discuss in the printed journal format. So, before I introduce the new article for discussion, I wanted to sum up a bit of what sort of 'experience' the discussion perezhivanie has been for me.


First, I want to say a huge thanks to ALL of us who so passionately engaged in the discussion, with many of us not just commenting but expending quite much time and energy (life!) in jointly reading and commenting a whole lot of articles, in jointly watching and commenting movies, following and analysing the social and political situation in the US in the first days of the new administration?... I personally have learn a lot from all these threads that so nicely connected (a) the articles in MCA, (b) our everyday (out-of-school one may say) experience with politics and other forms of art, and (c) the analyses and reflections in xmca.


Second, I want to apologise for not having been able to use even more time and energy in following up each and all of the exciting proposals of collective analysis and inquiry. One thing that I've learned concerns the possibilities and limitations for collective production that xmca? currently affords. I've been simultaneously overwhelmed by how much passion and energy it can generate and by how much more it needs in order to channel that passion and energy towards a collective project/production. This 'doubled' experienced has led me to take more seriously the challenge of how we might want to further enhance/organise xmca so as to allow for more sustainable forms of collective production. We still have a not-even-half-way done google doc trying to catch up with all experiences on Trump's inaugural speech. I am not sure how that may move further or if it will just remain a past testimony of a growing praxis as we move towards more efficient forms of collective production in the near future.


Finally, I am quite convinced that most of us now have a more nuanced and concrete sense of what we can mean to say when we say that something is a or relates to perezhivanie. I think there are points hat can be summarised as in the bullet points below. In offering you this overly incomplete list, I invite you to (a) add to the points below or add another points not mentioned here, and (b) add literature (references to studies, social movements, online resources, etc) that can be relevant for each of the points. If the exercise proves to be useful, I commit to curate the contributions and add them to a word document while we find more interactive forms of collaboration.


  *    I think the pertinence of perezhivanie as a concept relevant to conceiving and studying intellectual aspects as united to affective aspects has been made quite clear through the discussion. However, I personally feel that we still are in the very infancy of the question, still formulating the problem, with few contributions explicitly concerned with showing precisely how such unity exists in and as concrete phenomena in praxis, and how such exhibition can yield to social change and innovation. But I am sure that several of the xmca members know of studies that have already begun to work in this direction, and I believe that many of our own experiences during the discussion threw light. I particularly think
  *   A major source of dialogue and diversity concerned the apparent paradox of conceiving experience as a sort of state or reflection of a developmental stage, and as a form of working over and change (crisis). Different authors/participants seem to have different views on how the two aspects connect, and the notion of 'mediation' emerged as solution for some (like in Marc's paper), and as a problem for others. The discussion was a great opportunity to extend this tensions beyond the, as Andy put it, 'all too polite' discussions in the articles of the special issues.

Thanks again to all for all the great contributions,
Alfredo?