Re: spatial formations

Rolfe Windward (IBALWIN who-is-at mvs.oac.ucla.edu)
Sun, 26 May 96 12:54 PDT

Jay's expansion and clarification of mimesis strikes me as very right:
considered as relational systems, to experience the Other is a sympathetic
response; the Other is infinitely distant even as is territory -- identity
is impossible -- but in these terms, through mimesis, sympathy can and does
increase thus increasing the available/recognizable affordances. In line
with Edelman, the brain/central nervous system functions must then be seen
as primarily correlational rather than symbolic (information processing). I
think this is also consistent with C. S. Peirce's later formulation, the
idealism-realism he strove for as I read it: Second's are as real as Thirds
(or else the "outward clash" of Scotus would be inexplicable and there would
be no point in talking about them), but can not be reached.

This makes Jay's repost from the Bourdieu list intriguing. I should probably
find a copy of Thrift before commenting but can't resist noting that "non-
representational thinking" or "modest theories" seem in line with the
notion of mimesis as developed thus far, particularly in the suggestion of
what explanation means -- of what getting to know something means -- with
representation (theories/models) forming only part of the process. I would
suggest though that rather than weakening ontology (what we know) and
epistemology (how we know it), it is only the separation between the two
that is softened. A situated, mimetic individual is, for me, even more a
knowing individual than ever before -- profoundly _nexial_ -- and yes,
still very much an individual, just not so lonely.

Rolfe

PS: sorry about the stone-punting Johnson's -- I think I was in the wrong
century. Elya/Ilya will have to be satisfied with my dyslexia (I try not to
be careless with cites but I do indeed slip up now and then -- I think Vera
corrected my spelling of Polanyi one time <sigh>).

PPS: thanks to Eva for the translation/explication -- that sounds just right.

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Rolfe Windward (UCLA GSE&IS, Curriculum & Teaching)
rwindwar who-is-at ucla.edu (text/BinHex/MIME/Uuencode)
CompuServe: 70014,0646 (text/binary/GIF/JPEG)

"The real is the realization of one of many possibilities."
-Ilya Prigogine