Peter Jones,
You say,
Where is the meaning, then? The same place as its beauty, its emotional and
intellectual power: It is in the work (the text) itself; indeed, it is the
text itself, where a specific interrelationship between writer, reader, and
hero has been fashioned into a meaningful, communicative thing. Romantic
or what?? Best wishes to all
First, I have enjoyed your last two messages.
A question that surfaced in your last message was, what about Activity? If
rather than theorizing "meaning" in the text or the subject/s what if it was
theorized in the activity itself.
A brief example from a classroom I'm looking at right know. I am coding this
classroom collective as apposed to individualistic in relation to how
"literacy" is understood in the classroom. There was this text, Weekly
Reader, which through the process of the activity was transformed into
another (similar to Peter's figures). Several questions emerged such as
where is the line between student and community, old text and new text etc.
I guess what I am questioning is if meaning or anything for that matter can
be meaningfully described out of Activity itself? The text of course ocurred
in one particular activity, directed at a specific audience, yet for it have
meaning it must become part of the activity (new one)itself. Vygotsky
statement about a word with out thought is a dead thing comes to mind. Am
using it here in the sense that a text is a product of activity and if it
does not become tranformed (as well as transforming) in a new activity it is
simply a reified artifact, and not desireable in my mind.
So, for me, saying meaning is in the text or meaning is in the individual
(or group) misses the point that meaning is in the Activity itself. Where
sense and meaning become joined, where the objective and subjective become
joined, where the individual and the collective become joined etc.
Just one last point, I like your description of text and for me it points
toward how the text is very much the product of activity. The question for
me then becomes when the product (text) of one activity enters another
should it not be transformed as well as being transformative. Meaning was in
the text because it was the product of activity, so if it does become
transformed in a new activity with a new text, does it not lose the richness
it had in the first place. I guess what I am asking is not meaning being
inside the text a misrecogition in that the text is the product of activity
itself?
Nate
Nate Schmolze
http://www.geocities.com/nate_schmolze/
schmolze@students.wisc.edu
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"Overcoming the naturalistic concept of mental development calls for a
radically new approach
to the interrelation between child and society. We have been led to this
conclusion by a
special investigation of the historical emergence of role-playing. In
contrast to the view
that role playing is an eternal extra-historical phenomenon, we hypothesized
that role playing emerged at a specific stage of social development, as the
child's position in society changed
in the course of history. role-playing is an activity that is social in
origin and,
consequently, social in content."
D. B. El'konin
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