I was vaguely aware of the similarity of perspectives between
Voloshinov (whose texts for me may as well have been written by
the same voice as Bakhtin's, whatever the historical arguments
about allocation to persons) and Vygotsky/Leontiev. Somebody must
know about the likely connections; Jim Wertsch maybe?
Those issues are probably ones for which multiple perspectives
are needed and useful, anyway. I tend to use Halliday's
distinction between 'meaning potential' which is an abstraction
from meaning-in-use; the former being what can be meant by what,
and the latter, what is meant in some specific situation/event. I
believe situated meanings to be more specific, indeed too
specific for complete representation by any sign system, even if
they are made on an occasion using the resources of such systems
(because of the infinite/inexhaustible context that accompanies
them). I tend to think of situated-local-contextualized meanings
as the more 'material' phenomenon, and akin I think to 'sense' as
used in Michael's account. Potential meaning is abstracted from
the set of use-meanings. This is a good example of 'rising to the
concrete', since the information value of 'sense' is vastly
greater than that of 'meaning' here.
But 'meaning' is correspondingly the more socially sharable, or
at least effectively integrable and communicable. It is more
characteristic of larger social systems over longer periods of
time, and would so be more akin to discourse formations that we
can define as part of historical traditions (ala Foucault).
Sorting out however the relations of systems of meaning potential
(like the grammar or semantics of a language) to historical
discourse formations, both in relation to instantial situated
meanings ('senses'), is very complex. (My most recent attempt is
a paper too long to read or publish.)
I would want to be a bit careful however not to be seduced by our
common way of saying that something 'has' a meaning, even a
meaning potential. At best, what has a meaning in this way is
itself a type, not a token, i.e. an abstraction, a class, we
construct, rather than a material instance we interact with.
Otherwise, I'm afraid we tend back to Platonism, or at least an
idea-realism, where the 'sense' of something may be our
construction, but its 'meaning' is objectively 'out there'. Our
traditions are used to identifying constructions, meaning, and
sense with _mental_ phenomena, and so, for materialists with the
not-objective. For me constructions ('sense') are quite material,
and so usually too specific to be inter-subjective, and when we
need to get agreement and cooperation we _ignore_ some of the
specificity, reduce information value, and get to what we can
pretend we share ('meaning'). Of course this is maddeningly
recursive, since even a type or class is a construction, and we
all construct them a bit differently, and when necessary need to
go to still 'higher' levels of abstraction (descending from the
concrete) to agree that we have defined them in 'the same' (ie.
equivalent in some activity) way.
I was fascinated by Michael's football example. Something which
is constructed as being 'the same' (i.e. football) in some more
abstract way (an activity of generalizing discourse), can also be
constructed with two (or more) quite different 'senses' in two
other activities (living the football fantasy, critical cultural
analysis of football). These activities each have their
characteristic discourses and other practices, and in each of
them one can make many levels of 'meaning' (what appears as if
more socially shared) vs. 'sense' (what is more unique to our
instance) distinctions.
What Michael's example points up for me is that not all
'fantasies' are local, temporary, or ad hoc. Some, like the
football fantasy he describes, are also social-historical
formations or institutions. In one way they represent
interpretations or construals of reality (ie. constructions of a
meaning-reality). What lets them be called 'fantasies'? I think
it is the fact that they are dominated. Sociologically, these
'fantasies' are part of people's total meaning-reality repertory.
Culturally, they are constructed as being incompatible or
contradictory with other interpretive schemes (they don't _have_
to be seen as opposed): this is the 'firewall'. And among their
'opponents' is some scheme or schemes which are sociologically
dominant, and claim to be the truer or better or more widely
consensual reality-interpretation. But in fact people live their
lives by means of multiple and contradictory schemes of these
kinds all the time. And, as I argued before, what is called a
firewall is really just one kind of seam, one kind of
articulation between schemes (and the activities in which they
are used).
The 'firewall' corresponds here to what I've sometimes called an
ideological 'disjunction' (_Textual Politics_, Postscript). What
Michael objects to as 'leakage' is not really a short-circuiting
of the disjunction (which is desirable, at least for analysts or
trouble-makers, in my view). It is a practice out of place
according to the disjunction: to see a football player as a hero
in the activity of a police action. Going beyond the disjunction
would mean being able to use _both_ schemas, overlaid or
integrated, in all situations where either is applicable. It
means seeing their opposition as a contingent construction,
rather than as inherent or necessary. After this 'ideoclasm',
only naked power can enforce the disjunction, revealing the
domination in which the disjunction participates (and which makes
it 'ideological'). Firewalls are too extreme; they limit and
control rather than empower. More permeable membranes, with some
directional bias to allow weak order (culture) to emerge out of
potential chaos (and corresponding to non-ideologically
functional 'meta-redundancies' in my model), or the stitches of
the quilting seam that join schemas together in larger patterns,
do not serve the interests of domination nearly so well. JAY.
PS. At a guess, the heroic football vs. bestial football
opposition belongs to the complex intersection of class
domination and gender domination in the cultural construction of
working-class and middle-class masculinities.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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