17 april 2000
from peter jones, sheffield hallam university
dear colleagues
I recognize that in bending the stick in the opposite direction from the way I
think Peter bent it I may well be in danger of snapping it! All the same, so
as not to defuse the argument at this stage, here are some more thoughts on
Nates, Gordons, and Deweys points as follows. Firstly, I think Nate and
Gordon are absolutely right to place the text (all texts) within activity.
Symbolic artefacts mediate activity, after all, in general terms so that
outside activity (or Activity with a capital A!) there are no texts. Meaning is
the product of life-activity. But what specific role do symbolic forms play in
the stream of activities? How do they mediate? And which activity or activities
are they the product of? In particular, what activity/activities do literary
works like Hamlet (to take Peters example) mediate and what does this
mediation consist of and how does it work? If, as Nates says, meaning is in
the Activity itself, then which activity are we talking about? Similarly, when
Gordon says that knowledge is remade through knowing in a situated activity,
what activity does justice to the knowledge the text contains? What
activity is adequate to the remaking of the knowledge it expresses? And why
this activity specifically? It seems to me that the term activity is a little
too narrow here. Literary works do not mediate particular activities, it seems
to me. By which I mean not that they are decontextualized (I think this term is
not appropriate to capture the dialectic of semiotic mediation, or of verbal
thinking etc) from human activity, but that their connections with life
activities (with life in general) are deeper, broader, and more fundamental.
Art is part of social life, a function of social life, yes. But the general
proposition that the meaning of the work (the text) lies in activity is
insufficient, I think, and could lead to narrow reductionist (instrumental)
views of artistic and literary production. I would put it the other way around:
it is not that the meaning of the text is in the activity, but that the meaning
of the activity is in the text! It is not (just) that the meaning of Hamlet is
in whatever activities lead on from it but that the text shows us life - it
shows us (represents, re-presents) a view of (aspects of) life in a way that
illuminates (potentially) the whole of our life and, therefore, impacts on our
whole attitude to life, our emotions, goals, ambitions, motivations, etc
thereby impacting (potentially) on all our activities (see Davydovs
contribution to the last ISCRAT congress on these deep emotional planes of life
activity). If it ceases to have this vital significance for us (ie if, as Nate
says, its meaning stops being recreated, being carried through into our lives)
it is converted into a fetish or something of purely historical interest as
opposed to something which works on us and moves us. The meaning of the text
is in life; the meaning of life is in the text. Vygotsky (in Psychology of Art)
quotes Plekhanov on the relation between art and life. Plekhanov, he argues,
shows that art is sometimes not a direct expression of life but its
antithesis, linking this to an argument about landscape painting which
developed only in the city, as a product of urban life. Why? What activity
renders the landscape painting meaningful? What activity (of the city dwellers)
does justice to the landscape? What activity does it mediate? I think the
message is that the work of art has its meaning in the (momentary) suspension
of daily activity; it is a moment of escape from it, distancing us from our
activities and allowing us to see them from a particular (new) angle, to
reflect on them, to critically relate to them. This moment of reflection is a
crucial one, and does not (always) give out directly into some activity or
other. Let us not take away quite so quickly this moment of
intellectual/aesthetic (creative or responsive), or theoretical-scientific
activity. This transition of the art object into life activity (without which
there is no meaning, no art object ultimately) is a special phase with its own
properties. The symbolic thing, in Ilyenkovs terms, is the ideal form of
human life-activity, in which the object of life activity is transformed into
a special object with which [man] can operate specially without touching and
without changing the real object up to a certain point (Dialectical Logic:
278), and the law of existence of the symbol lies in its being an instrument
expressing the essence of other sensuously perceived things, ie their
universal, socially-human significance, their role and function within the
social organism (273). What activity can do justice to these instruments of
universal socially-human significance? My point is that in correctly insisting
on the mediating role of literary or scientific works or texts, we must not
miss how and what they mediate, and, therefore, what efforts are necessary on
our part to do justice to them, to understand and make use of them. What
activity is necessary, in Gordons terms, to remake the knowledge contained
in a scientific text or work? Literary or scientific production, like the
reading or contemplating (Voloshinov) of the work produced, is itself an
activity, of course. It is a special moment whose specificity must not be
dissolved away. So in order to do justice to the meaning of the text (in order
to reveal to ourselves the power and beauty of the work and its significance
for us) is partly one of learning how to see (to feel) this artistic form as
that scenario of the event Voloshinov talks about. With a work as distant
from us in time, space and language as Hamlet, the effort we put in to the
learning is deliberate and obvious. The same is true, surely, of scientific
texts or works. Lets say were talking about understanding the relations
between time, speed and distance in physics and the equations that express
those relations, as given in a scientific text. We can learn the equations and
verbal definitions of the concepts off by heart, of course. But, as Gordon
says, this kind of activity - the test-orientated amassing of verbally
expressed knowledge doesnt lead to the kind of understanding we are talking
about (and advocating). In this form, all we have (or all the pupils/students
have) is a series of ready made answers to unknown questions. An answer without
a question is not an answer. Unless we have posed some questions (to nature, in
this case) we will not take the answers as answers. Doing experiments in the
classroom (for example) may help to clarify the nature of the problems we want
to ask about, or help us to see empirically the relations between things that
are at issue. But there is still a leap between whatever activity we perform in
relation to the equations and the equations themselves, because these equations
do not express the daily activity as it were of the scientist or the practical
experimental activity as such; they express the necessary, universal
interconnection of aspects of matter in symbolic form. These forms are a
particular work of conceptual thought, of conceptually (re-)working activity
and its results they therefore exceed, as it were, any particular practical
activity we perform in connection with them. Of course, we cant grasp this
meaning or put them to use unless we are engaged in practical activity with
things. Ultimately, these forms of knowledge arise from human practice, but not
practice in this narrow utilitarian, local sense but the historical practice of
social humanity. These symbolic forms store this knowledge: thats why we can
go back to them and study them again and again. They fix the results of
socio-historical practice in the forms of symbolic things whose understanding
requires practical and intellectual activities which do justice to what they
express. To understand them, we must recreate the problems which they were
developed to solve, we must feel ourselves addressed by them. Running out of
steam so will stop there....Many thanks for indulging me again.
All best wishes
P
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>>This is what I have been thinking about 'knowledge' too. It is remade
>>through knowing in a situated activity. Otherwise - whether 'stored' in
>>memory or in a printed text - it is inert and of little use. On this
>>basis, I would argue that the efforts of educational institutions to get
>>students to amass knowledge (in preparation for showing how much they've
>>acquired when responding to test questions) is missing the point. Both
>>'knowing' and 'meaning' are mediated actions performed for some purpose by
>>specific individuals with other individuals in a situated activity. The
>>artifacts produced in the process - said to 'contain' knowledge and
>>meanings - only come alive when they mediate some further action in a
>>similar or different activity system.
>>What d'you think?
>>
>>Gordon Wells
>>OISE/University of Toronto
>
>Gordon,
>
>While we would probably both agree that the effort "to get students to
>amass knowledge" is but one of several "missed points" (putting it mildly)
>on the part of the educational establishment, I agree strongly with your
>distinction between 'stored' knowledge and knowing and meaning--and the
>particular point that the schools miss. Now maybe it's because I do not
>know activity theory, but there's something I'm missing about your
>statement above. Once meaning/knowing has been constructed in a situation,
>it seems to me that the knowledge is both 'stored' *and* is tied to a
>meaning or knowing for the knower. So, I'm not perfectly sure what you
>mean by to "come alive." It seems to me that one can re-present this
>stored knowledge to oneself and invoke the meaning or knowing of it for
>oneself, hence to me this meaning or knowing does not need to "mediate some
>further action." ...or is it the case that re-presentation is another
>"similar or different activity system?"
>
>Thanks in advance for any responses.
>
>Dewey
>
>
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>
>"If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make
>reality the basis of our philosophy? ...But we cannot distinguish
>what is real about the universe without a theory...it makes no sense
>to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what
>reality is independent of a theory."--S. Hawking in Black Holes
>and Baby Universes, 1993.
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