It strikes me that it may be interesting to contrast this a bit with the
Piagetian complementarity of 'assimilation' vs. 'accomodation'. Here also
there is a sense in which the organism adapts to the environment, a sort of
internalization, though P. probably had more in mind adapting to the
structure of a Kantian apriori than to social processes. And there is also
a sense in which the organism produces, or constructs, novel 'products',
but these products are themselves just mental schemas of abstraction,
rather than externalized material artifacts. Clearly the two
complementarities do not map neatly on to one another -- which gives me
some ideas.
The notion of 'internalization' seems to suggest that there is always
'accommodation' -- that the organism always changes internally as it
engages in ecosocial process. Can we learn here from Piaget a point made in
somewhat different terms, and from very different motivations, by Varela:
that sometimes the organism does NOT change, but finds a path of least
resistance, a way of being in and with the ecosocial flow/doings and which
minimizes the need to change? ... ways of perceiving and doing 'as if' the
old modes of action, the existing tools and skills sufficed ... and insofar
as this is successful from the organism's viewpoint, maintaining a relative
invariance? I think that in development, while change is salient for us as
observers, and while particularly in children (as in history) we tend to
see them/it as honoring us-now by becoming-to-us, that adequate accounts of
both developmental and historical change also need to tell us why and when
things do NOT change, or change slows, or stops temporarily, or becomes
only trivial difference.
Wherever there is change (in some respects), there is also invariance (in
other respects). This is a still more basic complementarity. I think we
should aim at a single account of both aspects of developmental
trajectories, if only because a single view of both should make for a more
constrained, and so more robust when successful, type of theory.
So what, in this sense, is the role of such 'non-internalization'? (After
all, Yrjo is suggesting we try to adapt a dialectical mode of reasoning here.)
...
And then is there a meaningful sense of 'non-externalization'? Clearly Yrjo
sees that by externalizing in signs and tools and other artifacts, a
trans-mediation is produced by which development is coupled to history in
both directions. Not only does history contextualize individual development
through the texts and tools already made, but individual development
produces texts and tools in turn, often transformed by the uniqueness of
individuation in a particular historical moment, which can then induce
further difference (sometimes like, sometimes in reaction) in the
development of others. In making texts and tools we make the history in
which those who come next will develop.
Clearly we cannot _not_ make texts, we cannot _not_ leave our mark on the
material ecology in which we develop. Our development requires interaction,
and if nothing else, its entropic effects make a mark. At a deeper level,
probably we also cannot help introducing some changes into the language as
a system (altering probabilities, framings, classifications, coining words
and phrases, making available new intertexts that change the meaning
potential of the system for others -- even if we do not change deep grammar
very often), though the effects depend on scale, and on the collective
response to our innovations and idiosyncrasies. That response may be, for
many purposes, non-response (non-internalization, no change in behavior),
or not enough to make noticeable ripples on larger scales. Similarly for
tools and artifacts; we may or may not invent new tools, new technologies
that spread, but we must make something material happen, and come into
persistent being, with the potential to contextualize others' development,
a bit, for a while.
But the theory of development leads us to expect two other sorts of
analytically separable components: type-specific recapitulation and unique
individuation. Recapitulation is change on the organism level, but
invariance at the species level. Individuation is potential change at the
species level, some novelty in development compared to other organisms of
the same species. If we take the social group/caste (say ala Bourdieu's
production of habitus) here for species, then our externalizations will be
both typical and so not introduce anything new into the ecosocial mix, and
also unique. The former tends to preserve the invariance of culture, the
latter to feed it options for change. So, while we must externalize to
develop, and all externalization links our development to historical
development, historical development also has its non-change (or slow or
trivial change, or change in this but not that) aspects.
Finally we reach an interesting paradox, typical of dialectics across scales:
So far, my discussion would seem to suggest, in accord with a romantic and
individualistic notion of the sources of historical change, that only
divergent externalizations can contribute to change. But they also move
history who only do the usual things, because they contribute to the larger
scale forces of contradiction between this usual practice and that one (say
gendered, or class-typical practices) which move history on larger scales.
(The cross scale relation here is obviously quite complex.) And they do
also contribute to the historical processes that maintain invariance, of
course. (They, here, is of course 'we' insofar as most of what we do is
typical rather than divergent.) So the maintenance of invariance at the
individual level of analysis ('non-internalization' or 'assimilation') can
still contribute to change at the institutional or community level.
Even more strangely, but quite wisely, I think (in the sense of the wisdom
that survives) non-internalization at the individual-development level of
analysis can prepare in essential ways for developmental change: by doing
some but not other things that others do, in an environment where doing
those other things has left traces, have lengthening chains of consequences
(or extended networks of actant-partners and further sorts of doings), we
eventually find ourselves forced to change -- perhaps internalizing
'belatedly' (or just on-schedule for ourselves), or perhaps diverging in
compensation. I wonder if people have studied the role of periods of
non-change in development (other than as time for 'consolidation' of prior
change)? or even the role of resistance to change as a pro-active tendency
in development?
When we externalize, we and others can and do do new things with what our
prior processes produced, thus shaping our own future development as well
as potentially changing others. But we may externalize in ways, and in a
sequence in time, that favors convergence with existing networks of
practices, or else in ways that diverge from them and promote the
possibility of our own further and later divergences and divergences by
others, perhaps in unpredictable ways. It is clear that both the
materiality and the meaning-values of externalizations are critical to
these ambivalent linkages between development and history.
I certainly look forward to Yrjo's paper! JAY.
PS. People interested in how ordinary use of language (typical and
moderately divergent) contributes to longterm processes of linguistic
change should have a look at the work of Claude Hagege, a prominent French
linguist, most accessibly in:
The Language Builder:
Essay on the human signature in linguistic morphogenesis
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1993; xii + 283pp.
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JAY L. LEMKE
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
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