Like Mike, I was reminded of Dewey & Bentley (and Bentley alone) and also of
Rosenblatt when the word "transaction" came up. Like Diane, I was confused
about why the best example would be evil person and evil acts.
I'm thinking of Dewey & Bentley's "The knower and the known" and all of
Rosenblatt, but especially her 1985 article from Research in the Teaching of
English, "Viewpoints: Transaction vs. interaction - A terminological
rescue operation."
In all these, "transaction" picks out the relations between a person and the
stuff the person thinks about, including texts. For Rosenblatt, interaction
can be what happens to billiard balls; transaction cannot. With readers and
texts, it's just the idea that a reader (within a context) shapes a text
(within a context) and that, at the same time, the text shapes the reader
(and the context). Reading or knowing operate as a system and not as a
simple, unidirectional transmission. What Rosenblatt eventually called "the
poem" was the reader-with-text relation that could not be analyzed into
either alone. It seems to me that activity theory and critical theories can
enrich our understanding of transaction, but I'm not sure I see how they
contradict the notion. Judy, I know you know all this, so is your response
to the word related to a bigger frustration with Rosenblatt?
In the evil person example, I'm not sure how it applies. It seems to me
that the better example of transaction would involve asking how one person
comes to think of another person's acts (or self, I guess) as evil. Then
you have a knower/known transaction.
Randy
----------------------------
Randy Bomer
Language Education
Indiana University
201 N. Rose Ave.
Bloomington, IN 47405
(812) 856-8293
Diane writes:
> judy writes, in response to the quote about evil and bad people:
> "Transactional" doesn't work for me, but I haven't read the article.
> Inter-action can entail dialectical relations; circular causality can not.
> Trans-actional connotes what? no difference? equal parity? schizmogenesis?
>
> i agree - transactions are simple-directional (ahistorical) activity, and
> this - while appealing to the traditional pleasures derived from simple
> cause-effect scenarios - does little to cultivate a sophisticated
> understanding of the human condition in the social world.
>
> if "transaction" is a reference to "transactional analysis" from the early
> 1970s (or '60s?)
> then perhaps "transaction" is intended to mean something other than
> trading.
> but it is, most commonly, a capitalist reference to trade. inserting this
> into
> these kinds of discourses is a bit discomforting to me.
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