Dear Devil Advocate (Judy :-)) and everybody-
Judy, I think you are raising very good issues about me objectivizing my
students. I think you are right - I'm both objectivizing and finalizing my
students. However, I do not think it is bad to objectivize and finalize
unless it is all what I do. Early Bakhtin was talking about objectivizing
and finalizing others as a gift that we give others using our surplus of
vision and transgradience. Of course, the gift can easily become a poison if
it is not compensated by another gift of subjectivizing and problematizing.
Here is my "defense":
1) I'm working with the students' statements and thus accessing their
subjectivity (although not in a dialogic way);
2) I plan to share my findings with my future students for sure and
maybe even with past students (although it is difficult to track them);
3) I want to disrupt whatever findings will be in my future teaching.
Like Vygotsky, I believe that I do not fully understand a phenomenon until I
can disrupt and change it.
4) I want to use my findings for creating better dialogic
possibilities with my students.
What do you think?
Eugene (Devil Advocate on Devil Advocate :-))
-----Original Message-----
From: Judith Vera Diamondstone [mailto:JDiamondstone@Clarku.edu]
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 9:03 AM
To: ematusov@UDel.Edu; anamshane@speakeasy.net
Cc: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: RE: improv
Hi Eugene and Ana. Thank you, Ana, for playing devil's advocate in such a
useful way. And thanks, Eugene, for your helpful elaboration of a
dialogical/monological matrix.
I was going to play devil's advocate, too, but I'm glad to have waited. Now
I can just raise the point (mucky up the previous points), in my own
unfinalized way, which is in reference to eugene's last statement on his
previous email (certainly not his last!):
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.
I think you are objectivizing here, but because you say your research is
preliminary, you haven't finalized your claim. Also, you are objectivizing
your students' postings but not necessarily your students .
Still I wonder if it is possible to objectivize someone's words without
objectivizing the speakers. Let's say you recognize that the saying is done
by someone whose point of view on the world you are not representing[. Then
it would be more in the spirit of subjectivizing your students to
contextualize their postings, dialogi[zing them by situating them in a
perspective on the world which is, presumably, unfolding; unfinalized..[Then
you would have to interview your students about whether the perceived
themselves to be objectivizing and why they were then... etc.
what do you think?
judy
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