bill sez
>There are important issues to be resolved and I'll risk attempting some
>headway in this public space. First we should work to express our ideas
>as precisely as possible, and I'll attempt some of that this morning.
>With the pace of conversation on xmca, we often write in shorthand
>notation, and most of the time I have found that we do not really mean
>what we write so literally. Rather we express our ideas metaphorically,
>i.e. as 'bumping'.
- do "we?" my experience is that the language of activity-theorists and
researchers is itself
a particular activity that is 'bumped' more with languages that are _not_
reiterative of the dominant discourse. so long as the assumptions and
presumptions that pre-serve
activity-theory-discourse are maintained, there is a a momentum of 'unity'
motives: the appeal to 'unity' is sustained by the language, not the
theory.
the precision you refer to is one of the limitations that makes this
'unity' possible in the first place.
>We are often making an offer in the search for the patterns of words that
>will provide a better description than our extant language.
are we?
is this what "we" do Ideally, or is this the actual practice of
articulating the discourse - ?
if i pretend to have no opinions, for example, i am better 'heard' than if
i
admit to biases. so long as the dominant language of 'activity-theory' is
designed to
resist its own interrogation,
the only bumping that takes place is in the renegade speech of its
skeptics.
precision, like 'clarity', forecloses interpretation and empties metaphors
of their possibility.
is this a question of how-to-write or how-to-read what's written? each
activity-theorist is engaged in this activity of writing and reading the
theory and the meanings of the research -
each theorist/researcher is reproducing
an analysis of 'activity' systems, - how is the activity system of the
theorist
implicated in the designation of activity-systems and unities ?
how are the activity-theorist/researchers' motives implicated in the
identification of
others' "motives?"
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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