This is also for the whole list. I keep forgetting that Eugene is a
separate constellation in this universe.
Ana
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: improv
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 23:40:38 -0400
From: Ana Marjanovic-Shane <anamshane@speakeasy.net>
Reply-To: anamshane@speakeasy.net
To: ematusov@udel.edu
References: <008f01c35fc8$915dfe20$1900a8c0 who-is-at Eugene>
Dear Eugene and all,
In the tradition of CHAT I would like to ad another angle to the
following excerpt form Eugene (below):
Eugene's definitions:
Subjectivized problematizing - when you have an inquiry about another
person that you are directing to this person.
Objectivized problematizing - when you have an inquiry about another
person that you is going investigate without asking this person.
Subjectivized finalizing - when you make statements of certainty about
another person based on what the person said about him or herself (emic).
Objectivized finalizing - when you make statements of certainty about
another person based on your own observations, speculations,
generalizations, inferences, and interpretations (etic).
In both cases of "subjectivization(?)" whether you problematize or
finalize -- the other person is not only in a dialogue with you but
he/she is also the TOPIC or OBJECT of discourse/dialogue. And as an
OBJECT of a dialogical activity, it is co-constructed between the people
who participate in the dialogue and who might be intended audiences. So,
in other words, there is a difference between the "actual" other person
who is participating in the dialogue and the "personality" of that
person which is the "object" of the dialogue (TOPIC).
Since that "objectivized" personality (lichnost) is a product of a
particular dialogue and relationship between the involved parties at a
certain point of time (cultural, historical, situational, etc.) it is
an evolving and unrepeatable phenomenon, but it does affect in may ways
both of the "actual" participants in the dialogue.
From that point of view, I agree with Eugene, M.M. Bakhtin and
Dostoevsky, literary characters are no different kind of constructions
than personalities ("lichnost") in the "real life" dialogues. And since
the constructed objects (TOPICS), actually mediate relationships within
dialogues including dialogues with more than one person and dialogues
with oneself, it is absolutely conceivable that our own personalities -
"lichnost"s - as products of multiple dialogues although constructed by
the same means as the literary characters, become real when they become
accepted as true.
What about objectivizing (either for problematizing or for finalizing
purposes)? I think that in that case, the dialogue still exists, the
TOPIC (object) is the another person (like before) but the dialogue is
not with that person but with others. The only difference is that the
"physical carrier" of the personality is excluded from the active
dialogue -- and can't therefore participate in objectivization
(topicalization) of her/his person.
I hope this is not too confused.
What do you think?
Ana
Eugene Matusov wrote:
> Dear Ana and everybody-
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ana Marjanovic-Shane [mailto:anamshane@speakeasy.net]
> Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2003 11:33 PM
> To: ematusov@UDel.Edu
> Subject: Re: improv
>
>
>
> Dear Eugene and all,
> Unfinalizing. finalizing also reminds me of any analysis/ explanatory
> activity. You can open up layers and layers and perspectives upon
> perspectives if you unfinalize. It is also similar to the V.
> Shklovsky's "estrangement" method -- look at everything and everybody
> with a fresh look, and do not presuppose that you know everything.
> There is always something more.
>
>
>
> I'm not sure I follow. Can you give examples, please?
>
>
> OK.
> But I have several questions:
> Don't you think that the two: finalizing and unfinalizing are
> complementary and that both serve a purpose, but a different one? Let
> me give you an example. Suppose you take the first response bellow:
> "I think that it would be a great idea to make a quick survey to find
> out exactly where the children's most favorite place is at the LACC."
> Suppose you make a quick survey and children told you "place A".
>
>
>
> Ana, I called kids' talking about themselves "subjectivized finalizing".
>
>
>
> And suppose that you made a lot of observations and you found out that
> in fact it seems that there is another place (Place B) at the LACC
> where they spend most time of their own will. Ok.
>
>
>
> I called making inferences from observations "objectivized
> finalizing". In both cases, it is finalizing because in both cases
> there are certain statement about the kids. Unfinalizing (or
> problematizing) is about articulation of uncertainty about kids. It is
> acknowledgment that you do not know about them or not so sure. There
> can be all 4 possible situations:
>
>
>
> Subjectivized problematizing - when you have an inquiry about another
> person that you are directing to this person.
>
> Objectivized problematizing - when you have an inquiry about another
> person that you is going investigate without asking this person.
>
> Subjectivized finalizing - when you make statements of certainty about
> another person based on what the person said about him or herself (emic).
>
> Objectivized finalizing - when you make statements of certainty about
> another person based on your own observations, speculations,
> generalizations, inferences, and interpretations (etic).
>
>
>
> Maybe you problematize this further and, say -- you will ask children,
> how come they spend more time at this other place (B) if they say that
> their favorite place is place A. And then suppose they don't know, or
> everyone starts giving you different answers...
> What I want to say is that at some point you might want to stop
> unifnalizing and begin making your mind up (finalizing).
>
>
>
> Sure,
>
>
> I am just playing a devils' advocate. :-)
>
>
>
> In my view, Bakhtin did not argue that finalizing is bad and
> unfinalizing is good but, in my view, he argued against excessive
> finalizing. I think that finalizing, problematizing, subjectivizing,
> and objectivizing are all good when they are not excessive or predominant.
>
>
>
> It looks to me beautiful and artistic to say that "Dostoevsky [did it
> not only] for the sake of reader but also for the sake of the
> character" -- but on the other hand the character is a fiction that
> would not exist unless Dostoevky wanted to tell readers about him.
>
>
>
> I respectfully disagree with you. When you have internal dialogue,
> your voices are all "fictions". When you talk with another people to
> some degree they are all "fictions" (in a sense that you have to
> understand them - imagine - to reply: you reply to your "fictional"
> understand to others). Bakhtin argued that innovation of Dostoevsky
> was to develop "non-fictional" fictional characters that surplus of
> vision that Dostoevsky did not. Already Pushkin (another Russian
> writer and poet) noticed that his fictional heroes and heroines have
> certain freedom over his imagination and creativity. He wrote to his
> friend that to his own surprised he found that Tatyana (from his novel
> "Evgeniy Onegin) got married and he (Pushkin) did not know what to do
> with that. Also famous Ukrainian writer Gogol (who influenced
> Dostoevsky a lot) complained that his heroes in his novel Dead Souls
> behave not how he wanted them to behave (and they literally drove him
> crazy!). Bakhtin argued that literature characters do not only have
> "material resistance" as Shklovskii and other formalists insisted but
> they can be co-partners in dialogue with the author as well like in
> Dostoevsky's novels and stories.
>
>
>
> I like the notion that as a social scientist you cannot turn people
> into things/object but that you have to "spiritualize" them (I guess
> he meant "give them life") and that you have to keep in mind that no
> matter what you are doing it is inter subjective and will have inter
> subjective consequences. But sometimes the "units" of analysis are not
> people, but relationships, or "formations" that are much larger that
> persons (lichnost). Or on the other hand, sometimes, there are aspects
> of persons (lichnosti) of which they might not be aware -- but you
> (as an observer, friend, social scientist...) are.
> However, that does not meant that we should "finalize" too much, On
> the contrary, I think that unifnalizing is very useful and that it
> should be done ALWAYS -- to the point where we all can say : as it
> looks at this point, until we find more about it, this looks to be an
> "XYZ" (whatever).
>
>
>
> Hm, does this make sense?
>
>
>
> Yes, it does... However, I wonder what our scientific value is in
> social sciences: "to find out ABOUT" or "to find out WITH" others...
>
>
>
> What do you think?
>
>
>
> Eugene
>
>
> Ana
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Eugene Matusov wrote:
>
> Dear Ana and everybody-
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: anamshane@speakeasy.net <mailto:anamshane@speakeasy.net>
> [mailto:anamshane@speakeasy.net]
> Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2003 2:12 PM
> To: ematusov@UDel.Edu <mailto:ematusov@UDel.Edu>
> Subject: Re: improv
>
>
>
> Dear Eugene,
>
> Can you tell us more about "this type of unfinalized and
> addressed relations" and how did Bakhtin thenk that they "have to be
> the key for any social sciences"?
>
> I think that Bakhtin introduced two notions that have not been well
> explored:
>
>
>
> 1) Spiritualization: problematizing and not finalizing people about
> (or with) you are talking about. Let me give examples of
> problematizing and finalizing (examples came from our class discussion
> of Latin American Community Center - LACC - children on the class web):
>
>
>
> Problematizing: "I think that it would be a great idea to make a quick
> survey to find out exactly where the children's most favorite place is
> at the LACC.". Problematizing involves articulating uncertainty about
> LACC children.
>
>
>
> Finalizing: "Please don't think that I feel harassed, because I don't.
> I feel that they are just boys being boys" (in the context of
> preadolescence boys using sexual language toward a female university
> student). The student does not problematize the boys actions but
> normalized and objectivized them.
>
>
>
> 2) Intersubjectivity: treating your topic of discourse/narrative as a
> co-subject and a co-partner in a dialogue. Bakhtin used the term
> "personality-ness" (actually Bakhtin used the term "lichnost'" in
> Russian) to articulate the intersubjective nature of investigation
> about another person in humanitarian sciences as in opposition to
> "thing-ness". In my work, I use terms of "subjectivizing others" and
> "objectivizing others". Let me give examples of subjectizing and
> objectivizing (examples came from our class discussion of Latin
> American Community children on the class web):
>
>
>
> Subjectivizing: "an LACC child says that she was not proud of being
> American because Americans bomb her home island in Puerto-Rico".
> Subjectivizing involves getting information from LACC children themselves.
>
>
>
> Objectivizing: "They provide such a great environment and wonderful
> experiences for the children who go there. Kids love them." The
> student was talking about the violence prevention program for boys at
> LACC. What was interesting is that later the students learned from the
> boys that they hated the program and tried to avoid it as much as
> possible. Students' inferences based on their observations were wrong.
> The issue is not where observation- or speculation-based inferences
> are right or wrong but rather that the author does not try to check it
> with the people themselves about whom they talk. Objectivizing is
> based on the author drawing information and conclusions in his/her
> statements about the LACC children from his/her observations, general
> knowledge, and other people but not from the LACC children themselves.
>
> Below is a quote from Bakhtin's essay Bakhtin, M. M., Holquist, M., &
> Emerson, C. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (1st ed.).
> Austin: University of Texas Press.
>
> "The exact sciences constitute a monologic form of knowledge: the
> intellect contemplates a thing and expounds upon it. There is only one
> subject here-cognizing (contemplating) and speaking (expounding). In
> opposition to the subject there is only a voiceless thing. Any object
> of knowledge (including man) can be perceived and cognized as a thing.
> But a subject as such cannot be perceived and studied as a thing, for
> as a subject it cannot, while remaining a subject, become voiceless,
> and, consequently, cognition of it can only be dialogic. Dilthey and
> the problem of understandings Various ways of being active in
> cognitive activity. The activity of the one who acknowledges a
> voiceless thing and the activity of one who acknowledges another
> subject, that is, the dialogic activity of the acknowledger. The
> dialogic activity of the acknowledged subject, and the degrees of
> this activity. The thing and the personality (subject) as limits of
> cognition. Degrees of thing-ness and personality-ness. The
> event-potential of dialogic cognition. Meeting. Evaluation as a
> necessary aspect of dialogic cognition.
>
> The human sciences-sciences of the spirit-philological sciences (as
> part of and at the same time common to all of them-the word)."
> (Bakhtin, Holquist, & Emerson, 1986, p. 161)
>
> When Dostoyevsky did not tell about his characters more than they
> alredy know themselves, I think that that was a way to ensure that the
> reader sees everything from "inside" each character. In other words --
> there is no "narrator" no character to tell you anything more than you
> would find in natural life if you were able to follow each character
> in those relevant scenes.
>
> I think it is more than just let reader knows how the character thinks
> and feels "inside". Rather, as Bakhtin argued, Dostoevsky tried to
> develop intersubjectivity with his characters. That is why he never
> portrayed how characters die (unlike Tolstoy). Now in words of Bakhtin,
>
> "The hero [student] interests Dostoevsky [the dialogic teacher] not as
> some manifestation of reality that possesses fixed socially typical or
> individually characteristic traits [like "slow learner", "good
> student", "having misconceptions," "learning disability", "African
> American student", "lazy", "from poor family", etc..], nor as a
> specific profile assembled out of unambiguous and objective features
> which, taken together, answer the question 'Who is he?' No, the hero
> [student] interests Dostoevsky [the dialogic teacher] as a particular
> point of view on the world and on him/herself, as the position
> enabling a person to interpret and evaluate his own self and his
> surrounding reality. What is important to [the dialogic teacher] is
> not how his hero [student] appears in the world but first and foremost
> how the world appears to his hero [student], and how the hero
> [student] appears to himself" (Problem of Dostoevsky Poetics, 1999,
> p.47) [in brackets, my 'translation' of Bakhtin's point into education].
>
> This unfinalization engages a reader to build the missing parts of the
> story and in a way to be in the story next to every other character
> and not "above". The result is a certan kind of equality between the
> reader and the characters -- and maybe also the writter as a hidden voice.
>
> Again, I think, according to Bakhtin, unfinalizing is not only done by
> Dostoevsky for the sake of reader but also for the sake of the character.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Eugene
>
> PS My preliminary research of my students' postings about LACC kids
> show that they almost exclusively objectivized and finalized LACC
> children in their discourse on the class web while the instructor was
> trying to subjectivized and problematized. However, the students
> subjectivize and problematize themselves and some other third-person
> narratives.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Ana
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eugene Matusov [mailto:ematusov@udel.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, August 7, 2003 05:40 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Subject: RE: improv
>
> Dear Carrie and Ana-
>
> I just want to make a connection between your characterization and
> emphasis
> on "not knowing" in improvisation and Bakhtin's notion of
> "unfinalizing". He
> also stressed importance of listening and responding to others. Bakhtin
> argued that Dostoevsky did not tell about his characters more than they
> already know themselves. He generalized that this type of unfinalized and
> addressed relations have to be the key for any social sciences.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Eugene
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: lobman@rci.rutgers.edu <mailto:lobman@rci.rutgers.edu>
> [mailto:lobman@rci.rutgers.edu]
>> Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 1:18 PM
>> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>> Subject: RE: improv
>>
>>
>> I think improv does change some of the expert/novice dynamic because its
>> a not-knowing activity--as Ana says no one "knows" where it is going. I
>> do think I think for me the prerequisite to listening and responding is
>> not knowing. It is impossible, not to mention not necessary, to listen
>> to people if we already "know" what they mean--it stops the process of
>> making meaning together.
>>
>> I see this as different than equalizing people or making people
>> equal--in my experience when people improvise together all of the power
>> relationships are still there, but they are played with or used in the
>> process of creating the performance.
>>
>> For example, there was one man and seven women in the group of teachers
>> that participated in the improv trainings. During the first couple of
>> weeks some of the women had reactions to the more his "more male"
>> performances--more vulgar or lifting up his shirt... In addition he was
>> the only one in the group with any theatre training so his performances
>> tended to be a little more polished. Over the course of the eight weeks
>> the group began to use his offers to create interesting scenes--they
>> began to use their more "honest" reactions to him to create playful
>> scenes about sex roles.
>>
>> Carrie
>>
>>
>> > I loved the idea of improv leveling power differentials. That is a
>> major
>> > goal of various customs in the 5thD. It is, however, very threatening
>> to
>> > teachers who are working in regimes where they must appear to be in
>> > control all the time!
>> > mike
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>
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