bruneresteemed xmca-folk,
I'm forwarding this from Carl Ratner. Apparently he unsubscribed but wanted
to respond to the comments made on his paper. I had forwarded these to him
after asking him if he was going to reply which is when he told me he had
unsubscribed (geez that's tangled). Anyway, I said I would play
intermediary for him as long as there are comments on his article and
comments to it, etc. etc. I will simply be a bi-directional mirror site to
him as it were, no filtering, for the purposes of facilitating that thread.
Paul H. Dillon
----- Original Message -----
From: Carl Ratner
To: Paul H. Dillon
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2001 12:13 PM
Subject: bruner
Hi Paul,
I wonder whether you received the comcments I sent over xmca in response to
Andy & Doris? Since I'm not on the list I'd like to know if the comments
were received.
I just read Bruner's latest book, Minding the Law and it inspired me to
write some critical comments. What do you think of:
In a later piece entitled "On The Dialectic of Culture" (Bruner & Amsterdam,
2000, pp. 217-245) Bruner acknowledges that institutions and social rules do
affect psychology, however, he minimizes their impact and winds up espousing
his earlier position exalting the mental freedom of individuals. For Bruner,
the dialectic of culture consists in the tension between established canons
of action, institutionalized and administered in organizations, and the
human tendency to create alternatives to them. Bruner recognizes that the
status quo includes social roles that orient people to think and act in
particular ways e.g., "We behave and think `post-officeı in the post
office." He also speaks of social change including actions to alter social
institutions and normative actions. However, these acknowledgements of
social conditions and forces turn out to be largely nominal. They are
constantly shot through with assertions that individuals are ultimately free
of social bonds because they can exercise their imagination and dialogue
about their creative ideas.
Bruner negates the power of social institutions in a number of propositions.
Firstly, social institutions are not too constraining because they,
themselves, are products of negotiation. Moreover, compliance to social
norms is purely voluntary in Brunerıs view. Institutions donıt compel
particular behaviors; itıs just easier and more effective to act according
to social norms. For instance, in New York City "You donıt have to deal with
municipal functionaries as a New Yorker would. But itıs easier, and maybe
even more effective" (p. 235). Social influence is therefore easily avoided
if one tolerates some inefficiency and discomfort. Rather than culture
penetrating into an individualıs psychology and organizing it, culture is
more akin to a set of aids for making life easier which a person can accept
or reject. Social influence is further attenuated because individuals always
have many opportunities to develop alternative
ideas: "Cultures S institutionalize `sitesı to aid us in possible-world
construction, such as theater, fiction, and partisan politics" (p. 235).
These alcoves exist because of the "human mental capacity that compels us to
project our imaginations beyond the ordinary, the expectable, the
legitimate" (p. 235). The continual striving to project our imagination
beyond the given cannot be squelched. It is respected by leaders and
managers of society who institutionalize sites where people can escape from
social norms and devise new ideas and actions. Administrators of the status
quo may disapprove of dissidents, but "they [dissidents] are always left
some elbow room to do their thing" (p. 237, emphasis added). It seems that
individuals are always free to reconstruct their lives. The most important
element in such reconstruction is imagination. Reiterating his
intellectualized 1982 position, Bruner insists that the "orthodoxies of a
culture are always in a dialectical relationship with contrarian myths,
dissenting fictions, and (most important of all) the restless powers of the
human imagination" (p. 232, emphasis added). Bruner regards imagination as a
more important opposition to the status quo than social, political,
economic, or military opposition. The imagined, not real action, is what
gives culture freedom: "The dialectic between the canonical and the imagined
is not only inherent in human culture, but gives culture its dynamism, and
in some unfathomable way, its unpredictability its freedom" (p. 232).
Notice that it is not imagination with a certain content or leading to
certain action that makes us free freedom is not imagination of a more
democratic, peaceful, cooperative, egalitarian, environmentally sensitive
social system, nor is it action that implements these thoughts in practice.
Freedom is merely any mental exercise of imagination that conjures up new
thoughts.
The reason that Bruner emphasizes imagination as the crux of freedom is that
it already exists within everybody . If freedom is defined as
exercising imagination, then we are all free right now because we can use
our imaginations at any moment. Alienation, oppression, and conformity are
wiped away at a stroke by defining freedom as the imagination that lies
within us. Bruner never insists that true freedom requires altering the
social organization of life. While some people may wish to engage in
alternative action, one is just as liberated by simply exercising the
imagination and expressing ideas in narratives. Free wheeling individual
mentation and interpersonal discourse remain the cornerstones of Brunerıs
agency.
-- Carl Ratner, Ph.D. cr2@humboldt1.com http://www.humboldt1.com/~cr2P.O.B. 1294 Trinidad, CA 95570 USA
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