[Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: [New post] Why generations?

Andy Blunden andyb@marxists.org
Fri Nov 27 14:35:59 PST 2020


Wow! That is a really useful post, Zaza. I have bookmarked it.

I think your suggestion to frame xmca in terms of "risk" is 
very productive.
Thank you.

andy

------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Hegel for Social Movements 
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On 28/11/2020 7:51 am, Zaza Kabayadondo wrote:
> I follow a lot of the discussions on xmca but rarely post. 
> Despite many very warm invitations from Mike and others, I 
> have only posted on this forum 3 times since joining in 
> 2014. I read about 80% of the threads.
>
> So to the question, "isn't any adult xmca member allowed 
> to type..." here's are my thoughts:
>
> I'm a millennial so I have been observing online 
> discussion forum blowouts since I was about 16. People who 
> look like me (black, female, immigrant) get trolled online 
> all the time. I'm not saying xmca has trolls but I've 
> become conditioned to worry about the risks of posting in 
> any online forum. As a general rule it is safer not to get 
> sucked in - to watch but not to get blood on my hands. I 
> am only an active poster in groups where I trust 
> the members and feel safe in, even when I don't know all 
> the members. So what I asked myself what is it about xmca 
> that makes me feel like I have to be super careful about 
> what I post? What makes this group feel "unsafe" or 
> "toxic". In other words, what makes it feel *risky* to 
> post something on xmca? Below I've listed the 5 risks that 
> I worry about. There are more, certainly, but I picked 
> just the first few to start and paired them with some 
> design questions I think we should be asking about how to 
> design the community we want here.
>
> 1. "What is the context for this post? I think I get it 
> but are we talking about the same thing?"
> /The design question we can ask ourselves/*:* What can we 
> do to provide better context, in a way that invites more 
> members to add to an original post?
>
> 2. "I'm only marginally familiar with this topic, I'm 
> curious but I won't ask questions but I don't have the 
> energy to be "schooled" on this today." /The design 
> questions we can ask ourselves:/ How can we be 
> argumentative, informative, without being toxic? What is 
> the best way to engage novices and experts in this topic?
>
> 3. "Who else is out there, reading this? I don't know who 
> I'm talking to except the 5 or so active members"
> /The design question we can ask ourselves:/ What can we do 
> as a community to learn more about each other, our work, 
> and our domains of focus or ways of applying CHAT.
>
> 4. "If I post this will it turn into a long and laborious 
> (unpleasant) email exchange? Am I ready for a fight in 
> this space?"
> /The design question we can ask ourselves:/ How do we 
> bring critique without criticism? How do we sustain 
> conversation without putting the burden on only the 
> original poster?
>
> 5. "Dude, I don't read or speak Russian so I have nothing 
> to say about the translation from the original."
> /The design question we can ask ourselves: /How do we get 
> around the challenges of casual and virtual engagement; 
> and the challenge of not knowing who this community is or 
> if what I (each of us) can contribute will be valuable to 
> the community.
>
> So this is why, for me, it's not so straightforward to say 
> anyone can post. I'd love to see what other "risks" people 
> have perceived. I'd also love to be part of doing 
> something about addressing them, because I do think this 
> forum has the potential to be an incredible community for 
> more than just a handful of members.
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 12:35 PM Anthony Barra 
> <anthonymbarra@gmail.com <mailto:anthonymbarra@gmail.com>> 
> wrote:
>
>     Um, isn't any adult xmca member allowed to type what
>     he or she wishes and then click the Send button?
>
>     This talk of stifling, excluding, suppressing, etc is
>     confusing to me.
>
>     Maybe this is something only someone on the left can
>     understand?
>
>     If people want to post a comment, question, remark,
>     new topic, etc, they should just do it. Who cares if
>     it's not automatically received with open arms or
>     agreement?  Isn't that half the fun?
>
>     Is there really that much pressure and/or backstabbing
>     in academia? Shouldn't the accomplishment of reaching
>     that level come with the freedom to speak openly? As
>     one on the outside, I guess I'm naive to these
>     pressures. But nonetheless, they seem really
>     counterproductive to me.
>
>     Naively (I suppose),
>
>     Anthony
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>     On Friday, November 27, 2020, mike cole
>     <mcole@ucsd.edu <mailto:mcole@ucsd.edu>> wrote:
>
>         Great to see your voice, Phillip. Its been a while.
>         I, too, have been thinking about the long history
>         of xmca's inability to create a level and
>         welcoming playing field. I mourn
>         the days when Mary Bryson, Susanne Castell and Eva
>         Ekblad would conduct pointed lessons for those
>         participating in the discussion
>         for their utter blindness to issues of gender. And
>         we have seen the correctness of Foucault's
>         reminder of our inability to know
>         with any certainty the effects of our speech
>         actions too often to enumerate. Being "put on the
>         spot," as you say, is a clear example of a
>         discourse practice that
>         discourages participation from those who are
>         intimidated for fear of being seen as misguided or
>         of offending some
>         senior person who will, one day, be writing a
>         letter of recommendation for a scarce job.
>
>         So I, too, welcomed all of Arturo's notes and
>         those over everyone else. The crack in American
>         society opened up by the BLM, Metoo,
>         covid disruption, television of police murders,
>         ...... has brought us the presence of young
>         scholars sympathetic to, but critical of, Vygotsky
>         and the
>         tradition we refer to as CHAT. They are also
>         scholars who are adept in, and leaders in, the use
>         of digital media for reorganizing educational
>         practices at both the colleague and elementary
>         school levels in a manner that does not put
>         learners on the spot but affords a variety of desired
>         pedagogical outcomes.
>
>         Inspired by the elderly voices who remember that
>         this problem did not spring out of the ether, but
>         is baked into the way that xmca and
>         before it xlchc, developed-- against the explicit
>         wishes and designs of its creators.
>
>         At the following link in the lchcautobio you will
>         find a report, written in 1992 by two former
>         post-docs at lchc about the beginnings of xlchc, its
>         transformation into xmca as a way amplify the
>         feedback that xmca authors received (this only
>         worked well a couple of times, precisely because of
>         the issues being raised here for the past week).
>
>         http://lchc.ucsd.edu/XLCHC-PDFs/Finkelstein-Gack_Seeds-of-XLCHC.pdf
>
>         There you will see all of the problems that we
>         encountered when LCHC tried to expand beyond the
>         face to face practices in order to keep
>         former students, post-docs, and visitors in touch
>         with each other on a working basis as a way to
>         work around the discriminatory institutional
>         that restricted our ability to maintain an
>         integrated collective. A lot of smart,
>         experienced, people tried (Yro, Jim Wertch, ...It
>         failed, as we are witnessing.
>         Time for the next generation to join the discussion.
>
>         Like Phillip, I feel I have written enough,
>         probably too much.
>
>         thanks for reading this far if you have!
>         stay safe. take care
>         mike  😷
>
>
>
>
>
>         I, personally, have been lectured regularly by
>         colleagues who lament, xmca's failure to overcome
>         its white male, gender-blind
>         bias
>
>
>
>         On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 9:40 AM White, Phillip
>         <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu
>         <mailto:Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>> wrote:
>
>             dear Everyone:
>
>             thinking over all of the posts as an
>             aggregate, rather that individually
>             referencing them, regarding marginalization of
>             xmca members, i'm reminded that this has been
>             a topic over the last twenty-five years, that
>             i've noticed.  only this time, the response is
>             different in both quality and quantity, as
>             well as introducing shared tools of analysis -
>             which in my mind i believe is in part due to
>             BLM activism, and certainly a newer and
>             younger generation of colleagues here on xmca
>             with a mindful use of our shared professional
>             ethnographic tools. which i appreciate, greatly.
>
>             as any native english speaker knows, the term
>             - to put someone on the spot - elicits the
>             synonyms:
>             embarass - humiliate - shame - inhibit - tease
>             - degrade - crush - wither - show up.
>
>             if the intention was to praise the student,
>             why then weren't words of praise - for
>             example: "Thank you for that question.  I
>             myself have wondered about that evolution."
>
>             i'm reminded of Foucault: People know what
>             they do; frequently they know why they do what
>             they do; but what they don't know is what what
>             they do does."
>
>             in Brandon Taylor's novel Real Life, the
>             narrator notes that in social gatherings when
>             a white person makes a casually racist comment
>             to a person of color, the whites remain
>             silent, preferring not to move out of their
>             own comfort level.  really, nothing was lost
>             in translation.
>
>             from my perspective, there is too much
>             protection here on xmca of both white
>             fragilities, as well as white hetero-normative
>             male fragility.  and one way to work around
>             this is practice - i humbly suggest - is that
>             those who self-identify as CIS white male
>             could begin to point out points of view that
>             support white hetero-normative supremacy.  the
>             burden for this should not be placed on those
>             already socially marginalized.
>
>             i'm reminded that in a class i taught for
>             those working to get their master's degree in
>             education, that when i would assign Bryant
>             Keith Alexander's "(Re)Visioning the
>             Ethnographic Site: Interpretive Ethnography as
>             a Method of Pedagogical Reflexivity and
>             Scholarly Production" - in which Alexander
>             used the metaphor of pedagogy as drag - i
>             would get blow-back from some students
>             complaining that since they had no personal
>             contacts with gay men, much-less gay men in
>             drag, that they should not have to read the
>             ethnography.  my response was that since they
>             had no experience, this was a good way to
>             start since they had no knowledge of who their
>             students were, or their parents.  Yet within
>             their classroom, or school community they
>             worked in, there very well could be these life
>             experiences.
>
>             i'm feeling that i've written enough - this is
>             such a richly complex topic.
>
>             and so i'm grateful for Arturo's inadvertently
>             public response - it was illuminating.
>
>              phillip
>
>
>
>         -- 
>
>
>           IAngelus Novus
>           <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelus_Novus__;!!Mih3wA!S7fCXtTCVQWkCXnNSwdyFfFitd3dB8EuTUKFK0sSSJdSy8_M6BJohNdCkFQYltd7V6VOEQ$>The
>           Angel's View of History
>
>>           The organism, by its life activities, creates
>>           what is outside.  So organisms create the
>>           conditions of their own future
>>           which is different from their past" Richard
>>           Lewontin
>
>         Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!SBkmBkhWhBnjWkghRbECZoK90gYyR9xX7PrktzIstGwEZ2sa4rY9UyfIoQi8rpXGxcxjrg$ 
>         <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!S7fCXtTCVQWkCXnNSwdyFfFitd3dB8EuTUKFK0sSSJdSy8_M6BJohNdCkFQYltd1dis3rA$>
>         Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com
>         <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://re-generatingchat.com__;!!Mih3wA!S7fCXtTCVQWkCXnNSwdyFfFitd3dB8EuTUKFK0sSSJdSy8_M6BJohNdCkFQYltesckucQg$>
>         Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu
>         <http://lchc.ucsd.edu>.
>         Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu
>         <http://lchcautobio.ucsd.edu>.
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
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