[Xmca-l] Re: Covid 19: Getting the Name Right

[Andy Blunden]

Well, the Americans did pretty well in naming the flu 
pandemic which was incubated in a military camp in Kansas 
and taken across the Atlantic to Spain en route to the 
carnage in France, the "Spanish Flu."

Andy

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*Andy Blunden*
Hegel for Social Movements <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brill.com/view/title/54574__;!!Mih3wA!WkdkQgveBxmpghUoOmf7xks2JBWnLppU0ECMuZC0NNuLIi0R5MGMZdiJsQ85FPM0KExfeg$ >
Home Page <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm__;!!Mih3wA!WkdkQgveBxmpghUoOmf7xks2JBWnLppU0ECMuZC0NNuLIi0R5MGMZdiJsQ85FPPDBSRIdQ$ >
On 17/04/2020 8:21 am, Edward Wall wrote:
>       If you’all want to get picky about names you might 
> look here for some possibilities:. 
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html__;!!Mih3wA!WkdkQgveBxmpghUoOmf7xks2JBWnLppU0ECMuZC0NNuLIi0R5MGMZdiJsQ85FPP2oA3Exg$  
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html__;!!Mih3wA!QDqoHKfN9rsIen0hktwg62vWF_Zg0RnuNDpr6G3EFD42Kj1NDYzm2T7NEly6rlqhG6ZKwQ$>. 
>
>
>       In any case, I find the other name: SARS-CoV-2 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html__;!!Mih3wA!QDqoHKfN9rsIen0hktwg62vWF_Zg0RnuNDpr6G3EFD42Kj1NDYzm2T7NEly6rlqWKjRnFQ$> far 
> more informative, far more relevant, and far more 
> disturbing as regards the situation at hand.
>
>             Gadamer writes “Thus a person who wants to 
> understands must question what lies behind what is said. 
> He must understand it as an answer to a question. If we go 
> back behind what is said then we inevitably ask questions 
> beyond what is said.” So, perhaps, I have problems with a 
> thinking that believes it has landed on the “correct” 
> definition/answer (and all other thinkers are fools) as 
> that may well entail, perhaps innocently, a curtailing of 
> the crucial question. I find that the the answer 
> 'COVID-19’ obscures a lot (and, to be fair, does some 
> illumination).
>
> Ed
> Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he 
> is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him 
> for what he is.
>
>> On Apr 16, 2020, at  3:35 PM, David Kellogg 
>> <dkellogg60@gmail.com <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> I won't pretend to you that this is on my night table. 
>> Someone recently sent me the following quote from Hegel:
>>
>> “For although it is commonly said that reasonable men pay 
>> attention not to the word but to the thing itself, yet 
>> this does not give us permission to describe a thing in 
>> terms inappropriate to it. For this is at once 
>> incompetence and deceit, to fancy and to pretend that one 
>> merely has not the right /word/, and to hide from oneself 
>> that really one has failed to get hold of the thing 
>> itself, i.e. the Notion. If one had the Notion, then one 
>> would also have the right word.” (p.198) – sec. 329
>>
>> Vygotsky liked to quote Tolstoy: Слово почти всегда 
>> готово, когда готово понятие (the word is nearly (!) 
>> always read when the concept is ready) but it seems to me 
>> that in this case he would have stressed the word 
>> "nearly". There was a long debate over what to call Covid 
>> 19 at the WHO, and many people (including Michael Lin at 
>> Stanford) opine that they got it wrong.
>>
>> I think that they got it right, but that it took a while. 
>> I don't think it is
>> non-argument to point out that repeated attempts to 
>> change the name to "Chinese virus" or the nineteenth 
>> iteration of Covid or whatever are also motivated and not 
>> in a good way.
>>
>> More importantly (because as Hegel says mere incompetence 
>> and transparent self-deceit are at stake in this 
>> instance) I think in most societies naming is a 
>> process--a child has different names at different times 
>> of life, and LSV is probaby wrong to treat naming as a 
>> single function of speech that is simply replaced by 
>> signifying and does not itself develop.
>>
>> What disturbs me about the Hegel quote (and LSV's obvious 
>> enthusiasm for it) is that it seems to suggest that 
>> everything has, in the final analysis, only one correct 
>> name. But perhaps it all depends on that final analysis.
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Sangmyung University
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>> Book Review: 'Fees, Beets, and Music: A critical perusal 
>> of/Critical Pedagogy and Marx, Vygotsky and Freire: 
>> Phenomenal forms and educational action research'  
>> in/Mind Culture and Activity//
>>
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1745847__;!!Mih3wA!WkdkQgveBxmpghUoOmf7xks2JBWnLppU0ECMuZC0NNuLIi0R5MGMZdiJsQ85FPPlVcTZsA$  
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1745847__;!!Mih3wA!RxSyHRy22kiqZQHwsKuP3HGFuU9O2uo9DyVwSIIsNFfE0O3RpibgknJS735vbN8JpRvTyw$>
>> /
>> /
>> Some free e-prints available at:
>>
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/QBBGIZNKAHPMM4ZVCWVX/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1745847__;Lw!!Mih3wA!WkdkQgveBxmpghUoOmf7xks2JBWnLppU0ECMuZC0NNuLIi0R5MGMZdiJsQ85FPPGSFzBZg$  
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/QBBGIZNKAHPMM4ZVCWVX/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1745847__;Lw!!Mih3wA!RxSyHRy22kiqZQHwsKuP3HGFuU9O2uo9DyVwSIIsNFfE0O3RpibgknJS735vbN8Ro16M0A$>
>>
>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: "L.S. Vygotsky's 
>> Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"
>>
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WkdkQgveBxmpghUoOmf7xks2JBWnLppU0ECMuZC0NNuLIi0R5MGMZdiJsQ85FPN4kzCiow$  
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!RxSyHRy22kiqZQHwsKuP3HGFuU9O2uo9DyVwSIIsNFfE0O3RpibgknJS735vbN-3hPm_Zw$>
>>
>
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