At 09:48 AM 10/19/2001 -0700, Mike Cole wrote:
>
>Hi Alena-- For sure a LOT has been backed up by people in this discussion
>which turns up in their later work. Sometimes it is explicitly acknowledged,
>sometimes not. I don't think in cases where people don't attribute they
>are consciously being exclusionary, but rather, the ebb and flow of
>discussion simply melds into their ways of thinking.
>
>I can only speak for myself here, but our discussions of tool use were
>very important in helping me refine my ideas about artifacts. I am still
>struggling as do so many English speakers with the concept of an object,
>but I have gotten a lot more sophisticated about varieties of non-dualistic
>thinking than earlier.
>
>An interesting "tracer" might be the use of the metaphor of the blind man
>and the stick which appeared here many years ago from readers of Bateson.
>Bateson was not the only one who used it, there were precursors, but its
>subsequent appropriation has been interesting.
>
>Perhaps others have other examples and care to comment, perhaps not.
>mike
Thanks, Mike. I have to confess that I didn't really see what I wrote as
particularly worthy of response, but I am glad that you did, because what
I really wanted to know about was what corresponds to the punching
down part of the bread-baking metaphor.
I'm just wondering about the value of that punching down activity. Just as
there are breads that require no punching down, are there academic activities
that don't involve -- here I am at a loss for words, but whatever you would
want to call the academic equivalent of punching down? Are there legitimate
academic products that would be the result of some other process?
If you see the punching down as evening out the texture of the finished
product, isn't there an underlying assumption in promoting this metaphor that
even-texturedness is better than chunkiness? (I see even texture as
uniformity
and chunkiness as diversity -- but maybe I am making a level of analysis
error?)
I guess I am worried about making my writing as open-ended as my thinking is,
as fraught with (or enriched by) multiple readings internally as I am and my
"subjects" are, and I want to perform that in my writing, but if it won't
be seen
as properly "punched down", will it be to no one's taste?
Maybe I am just suspicious of the "punishment for your own good" argument
that I feel lurking in the metaphor, the violence of molding, academics as
perpetual novices needing to be broken so they can be remade and then
productive
of something with the right taste.
--Alena
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