I have just had a few minutes to catch up with some of the recent postings
... a few comments by way of contribution.
Right now I am at the stage of not wanting to hear/say more about the
recent devastation in the US. We are awash in rhetoric and spin and largely
mindless discourse about these events, absent knowledge of the relevant
history, of the relevant cultures; the typical war-speak and
counter-warspeak, which seem the same regardless of which the current 'war'
or quasi-war may be. Excellent examples of the not much publicized function
of language to throw up a cloud of words like dust in our faces, language
that makes thought less rather than more possible. It is unfair to the
constructive power of emotion to blame it for clouding our thinking; the
dominant discourses are doing this job perfectly well, as they have time
and again. Smoke in twisted mirrors.
In mediating thought and action, language can function obstructively as
well as constructively. I read this first in Steiner's classic _After
Babel_, though it was not the main point. Probably Nietzsche said it too. I
remember a discussion here of the potentially negative or destructive
darkside of scaffolding in a zone of proximal development; not a topic
often raised. Bateson saw it in the Double Bind. In our eagerness to praise
language and the constructive power of symbolic mediation, we unwisely
neglect to study the Dark Side of the Force.
So there may be at least this link between the crisis in psychology, or we
may say in the human sciences of meaning, and the lessons of the day. I
doubt that even collectively we know enough of what we would need to know
to usefully connect globalization patterns and fundamentalist reactions
beyond a few glib generalizations that any one of us could write down in
ten minutes. We could on the other hand probably do a pretty good job of
analyzing current warlike and anti-war rhetorics to show how they obstruct
critical analysis. But I am not much in the mood to do it.
There is a "Crisis in Psychology" as it was seen some time ago, and its
continuation today. I thought the rather horrifying snippet re-posted from
Mark Turner could stand as an example of the latter. I find it hard to
imagine saying much more about the general issue than Mike has said in his
Cultural Psychology, once and future. Except to document just how bleak the
crisis is on the mainstream side, or to worry just how big an opening there
is for a more cultural and historical approach to a study of
meaning-mediated activity.
So what would I like to discuss? History, I think. Or her-story. Our-story.
That is, try to get a better sense of just what role the "H" could and
should play in CHAT, what role it has played, and why it perhaps hasn't
played as big a role as it should, and where we might go by paying more
attention to it. I think we understand the role of Culture, and Activity
much better, maybe too much better.
The crises of the day, in the world and in psychology, I think, have quite
a lot to do with the elision of historical perspective from our policies
and our theories.
What do you think?
JAY.
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JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
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