alfred lang writes:
>We seem to have a lot of beliefs and inclinations in common, Diane.
>You declare openly that you don't actually believe in modern
>psychology, that being a fictive discourse; of the most trivial
>genre, I'd like to add.
excellent!
>-- I have now and then tried to show some
>faculty from various disciplines why it is a century's dead end and
>an obstacle to understanding the human condition. A sample of this is
>in my farewell lecture; unfortunately, its in German. Naturally, the
>psychologists objected, not in argument, but by aggression, because
>they felt personally attacked rather than reminded of any scientist's
>basic duty to draw in question his own beliefs.
ach! how wonderful for you to do so, and how predictable that the response
should be aggressive - the ability to be self-critical is fairly limited
in the academy, i find. methods can be questioned, but belief systems are
unfathomable, more powerful than knowledge, they are impervious to new
ideas and provocative challenges. i wish i could have been there - i have
always wanted to do something like that,
(but of course i'd never get away with it)
> I had much more
>success with a bunch of clever students. Also most non-psychologists
>understood quite well: historians, art historians, literary people,
>even some biologists.
here, i think you might see the difference as being one of investment.
psychologists have invested their professional careers in the belief that
psychology is a viable science - to question that is to question the very
identity of the psychologist, (which is not to confuse the scientist with
the psychotherapist, by the way) - but of course psychology is still very
powerful. there is too much at stake.
>Some even have well understood they need
>cooperation with a realistic psychology to do their own duties. None,
>though, would manifestly affirm my contention that a group or system
>of scientific undertakings to conceive of the human condition in some
>kind of comprehensive manner belonged right in the center of any
>university, of research strategies, and of educational programs. Yet
>the latter colleagues would eventually not keep up, when occasion did
>arise, to installing a really realistic psychology, probably for fear
>of loosing the financial support of that sheer numbers of
>psychologists.
haven't you heard? it is alright to rock the boat, just make sure no one
else is in at the time.
:)
>
>Did I use the term "foundation"? Indeed, foundations cannot be
>defined by convention nor by power. And tradition may go errant (?
>sounds horrible English?).
no, sounds GREAT English!!
>I have come to be sure those available --
>cf. terms like truth, knowledge, substance, subject, mind, matter,
>cause etc. -- are misleading. Maybe I use words such as foundation,
>basis etc. some times. But I don't mean something fixed except for
>some very basic constituents. If bioevolution could not build on
>reliable chemistry and physics of the atoms, it would quickly break
>down and so would all what's built upon it. The secret of evolution
>is the "evolution of evolutions" (John Dewey's phrase!), So it proves
>presumptions wrong anyway. Better to avoid, then.
this is something that came up earlier in the summer, the relations
between particle physics and theories about activity, the metaphorical and
material relations between atoms, chemistry, and such, with human beings
and the world we live with, these are constantly changing as these
sciences uncover new information - one might think that social sciences
would accommodate with these, or that co-communications would be involved,
but you're right, they do not. and the language of all this is, as you
note, quite impossible at times.
this is where i am interested in what Julia Kristeva has written about, "a
thetic of poetics" where "thetic" refers to the intolerable unconscious
activity that leaks into conscious thought at times, and is dismissed as a
"slip" or betrayed with "I didn't mean that," and so on - everything that
those who are absolutely certain about is, like belief systems, impossible
to deny, and so is invariably quite suspect.
>
>
> I still believe, and do so until
>somebody shows me wrong, semiotic ecology is built on one single
>assumption: structures emerging can combine or change each other to
>build new and affine structures. All the rest follows in the
>evolutive process. No other foundation is required. Would this
>eventually calm you fear?
ha ha- yes, so long as these are on those polygonal wheels you mentioned,
absolutely.
i suppose the role of human agency plays out here - that is, structures do
not build new structures or change existing structures, so much as the
work of people who desire those kinds of transgressions can instigate the
movements towards a kind of change.
sadly, this works for good and for bad, as some political leaders have
revealed recently.
>
>Structures in this sense emerging in biotic evolution and in their
>co-evolving environments are at the same time sort of self-contained
>and, in order to maintain themselves, also dependent on other
>structures, on structures particularly affine to them (nutritionals,
>mates, children, discussants etc.). On the one hand this combined
>autonomy-and-dependency renders the idea of absolute chance to be an
>ideal fiction found only in playing with symbols, but not among the
>structures of this world interacting. Contingency of encounters,
>however, remains and is of uttermost importance. But this makes for a
>decisive difference in understanding evolutions. I would never
>subscribe any statement so fashionable today that culminates in
>credos like we are forced to choose between an orderly lawful world
>or the absolute senselessness of a chance world in which anybody is
>utterly alone. I think this to be another of those PR tricks of those
>promoting their interests and in need of sheep to seek solace and
>guidance and serve the former's purpose. And so we are back at that
>vulgar Darwinism.
vulgar Darwinism - again, i enjoy your descriptions quite a lot. vulgar
Darwinism. !! great.
these kind of thinking seems reasonable, particularly your critique - but
i'd still have to say that there are forces of power at work where the
changes are manipulations designed to
maintain certain kinds of privilege, often. i don't yet see how any of
these changes can occur
independent of dominant ideologies, and just as those psychologists
reacted to your talk,
so do most people react quite strongly when their belief systems are at
stake.
here, again, i understand these as political systems - power systems, and
it seems to me that the ideas of a semiotic relation can be parlayed into
kinds of revolutionary languages,
ways of speaking that can articulate against reproduction masked as new
production,
and so on.
my 15-yr old niece has, actually, taught me quite a lot about language,
through her musical preferences, and her media-savvy awareness.
i am reminded now of the British rock group, The Who, and the desiring
refrain, "We won't be fooled again!!" which proved, alas, to be false, as
we are constantly being fooled by
the appearances of structural change, only to realize that these are
merely holographs disguising the same-old foundations ...
>
>
>
>In some sense I feel like being a kind of political animal. But
>obviously I don't like to burn or have my paws hurt in fighting with
>faux paws. Prefer instead to use my head. So I have mostly refrained
>from really entering those circles, preferring the position of an
>analyst from the sideline.
ah here we might notice a gender line. i assume the position of a
sideliner because i am marginalized by dominant practice, not absolutely
by choice, whereas you see this position as one of choice.
also, using one's head to consider the human condition neglects the heart
and body of
the condition, don't you think?
if we are going to work in fields, alfred, i dare say we will have to get
our hands a little dirty.
:)
>Diane, do you have a website or some papers I can read to learn more
>of your world? I must have missed reading most of your contributions
>to the list since you joined when I was mostly absent.
no, no website. and the only article i have published was in 1998, i
think, in MCA, and is listed in their archives on the website. i've
written a few papers here and there and invariably been dogged down by the
structure and discourse of the academic genre, a version of writing to
which i am not especially
keen nor especially interested in cultivating.
it has only been in the past year that i have felt like i might be able to
actually write with the idea of publishing, as up until now i have been
immersed in learning. and with every new idea, there seems to be a turn to
take, a corner to careen around, or a wall to run into, a contradiction
that defies simple answers, and so on.
however, just today I was hired to act as editor on a new journal-based
website, "lesbian.com," where i expect to have more opportunity to put my
writing up for reading.
and my book, "The falling scholar:essays in the outside" ought to be
published sometime in 2001. most of my thinking seems to spill out here in
this arena, interestingly enough.
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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