nate writes:
>Activity in my mind is an analytical tool where we can study the various
>interrelations that occur between more stable notions of meaning and a
>given
>community. By dynamic I am emphasizing its "relational" character rather
>than some romantic idea of agency.
i recall discussing this issue some time ago, in terms of boundaries, when
dealing with the interrelations that take place within a "community" -
frames of reference, for example, are often embedded memories, historical
repetitions, imperceptible turns and
gestures, generational cues and hidden misuses of tools, suggesting that
there need to be boundaries for determining where the Activity is located
(and i
think is where time-scales came into the context as a 'method' for framing
a boundary of what is infinitely complex - though these still cannot
account for the flesh of the thing...) - but where to locate these
communities in space remains a question for me... thus where to understand
the historical qualities of an Activity remains elusive -
>
>Yet, I may be wrong, just glanced at an article tonight that tells me its
>all in the memes again. Behaviors, ideology etc. are like like a virus
>that
>go on infecting every where it goes. My thinking is micro practices are
>important not so much because they are consumption practices, but rather
>that they produce. It seems that reproduction of ideology or normalization
>often takes the form of those positive relations.
i have been writing recently of the ways "us" intellectuals have a knack
for draining words of their meanings, switching from one word to another
like, as Derrida notes, "fashions" - the problem with ideology is that it
seems to have been sapped of its implications - we are discussing it in an
ideological context of "academic meanings," meaning that ideology is "out
there" but not "in here" where we are practicing and reproducing the very
structures that
are relied upon for maintaining the kinds of shared dominance that makes
ideology
ideological in the first place - a paradox of activity, indeed.
even these modes of writing as kinds of intellectual normalization,
and i have noticed when i drift from the normalized discourse, there are
communicative gaps - suggesting that the ideological discourse is
essential to the production, and reproduction, of normalization - so we
agree.
but how are these understood as "positive relations?"
diane
**********************************************************************
:point where everything listens.
and i slow down, learning how to
enter - implicate and unspoken (still) heart-of-the-world.
(Daphne Marlatt, "Coming to you")
***********************************************************************
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
==================== ==================== =======================
university of colorado, denver, school of education
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