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

[Alfredo Jornet Gil]

Anthony, it is very telling that you suggest that the issues being raised may only be understood by someone on the left.

I believe that to understand the issues you just need to have been trying to live and participate in a context in which your color of skin, your language or background is not to your advantage. And not even that, many people who only speak English are white and live in North America get it, so you might get it too if you try.

Alfredo
From: <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Anthony Barra <anthonymbarra@gmail.com>
Reply to: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Date: Friday, 27 November 2020 at 21:38
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: [New post] Why generations?

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


--
I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelus_Novus__;!!Mih3wA!S7fCXtTCVQWkCXnNSwdyFfFitd3dB8EuTUKFK0sSSJdSy8_M6BJohNdCkFQYltd7V6VOEQ$>The Angel's View of History
The organism, by its life activities, creates what is outside.  So organisms create the conditions of their own future
which is different from their past" Richard Lewontin
Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!RszrZFTBiz87azzjI6LsOW440hHdBXOc3dB3IwANawawZ3W6UajtJB1wqeBpVQ4xjt0IZQ$ <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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