[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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