David - Interesting that you mention Gee - as I read the early postings on breaking away concept, I thought of his 1996 book that contains an article asking What is literacy? and linking that to a necessarily preliminary question of What is discourse? or better, What are discourses? since he argues that there are many beyond the primary (the one that you're born into). Our young bird acquired that primary discourse, but never really mastered it - however, he did master the discourse of the target community with which he desired (I use the term loosely) membership. At any rate, Gee's idea of engaging with secondary discourses, and the degrees to which certain types of acquisitions/masteries develop might be comparable to the notion of breaking away.
Jim Gee (1992) has an interesting section on birding communities.
Gee, J. P. (1992). The social mind: Language, ideology, and social practice. New York: Bergin & Garvey.
Yrjö Engeström <yrjo.engestrom who-is-at helsinki.fi>
03/30/2005 11:55 AM ZE2
Please respond to xmca
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
cc:
bcc: David H Kirshner/dkirsh/LSU
Subject: Re: development: loss, destruction, transformation
Dear Dorie, that is an interesting example. Coincidence: I am starting
a new project on 'wildfire activities' among humans. One central case
will be birding. The is something in the object (birds) that is all but
impossible to contain by commercial forces. I call such objects
'runaway objects'.
Yrjö
Dorie Evensen kirjoittaa keskiviikkona, 30. maaliskuuta 2005, kello
00:23:
> While waiting for Yrjo's reply I wonder if this is relevant. I just
> heard a tidbit of Terry Gross' Fresh Air on NPR. She was talking to
> people who study the songs of birds (wrens, I think it was) - anyway,
> one spoke about studying birds in their natural environment to find if
> their travels (break aways?) affected their songs. The very young
> bird did something like a wild imitation of the father's (evidently,
> mothers don't sing) highly stylized song - but when the young (male)
> flew the home coup (usually traveling about a mile), his song took on
> the characteristics (and the refinements) of the birds in his
> neighborhood - after all, that was the territory he was wanting to
> make his mark in. His learning was definitely outside-in and
> definitely breaking away from what he was raised on (purposeful? - ok,
> I'm pushing it here).
> Dorie Evensen
>
>
>
> At 04:37 PM 3/29/2005, you wrote:
>> Nice to have you back, Mary.
>> Seems like we need to Yrjo's paper in front of everyone if we are
>> going to make progress
>> on this topic.
>>
>> Yrjo-- At the end of one of my notes on this topic I said that it
>> would be good to have
>> various people who took a "breaking away perspective" give examples.
>> What are your
>> favorite examples? Do you have a pdf version of the paper we can use
>> for dicussion?
>> mike
>>
>>
>> On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 09:39:44 -0800, Mary Bryson <mary.bryson who-is-at ubc.ca>
>> wrote:
>> > On 3/28/05 3:30 PM, "Mike Cole" <lchcmike who-is-at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > > but if your kid did not learn to add or read, you might get
>> unhappy. :-)
>> >
>> > OK, time for me to chime in here... I was a participant in a
>> day-long
>> > participatory conference <Beyond Postmodernism> some time ago <it
>> was
>> > actually a Postmodernism Bashing carnival> and the whole group was
>> > discussing the enormous significance of a scientific model for
>> "learning to
>> > read" <back to, postmodernism bashing> and so I instigated a "break
>> away"
>> > discursive intervention --
>> > I suggested that the discussion on "learning" might more fruitfully
>> <ha ha>
>> > intersect with some of the problematics of postmodernisms if
>> instead of
>> > "learning to read" we were to discuss "learning to be queer" and
>> how that
>> > might be facilitated and nurtured in educational contexts.
>> >
>> > Oops
>> >
>> > Oh dear
>> >
>> > Talk about the abject -- yes, well --- someone tried being nice and
>> said
>> > something like, "Don't you think it is partly genetic?" and then
>> they all
>> > went back to talking about "learning to read".
>> >
>> > Taking a genealogical approach to tracing the historical production
>> of
>> > "learning" there is so much that is pre-figured if the object of
>> analysis is
>> > the repetition of an act where we assume consensus --- "learning to
>> read"
>> > --- an activity that, in school, surely, is one of the means for the
>> > production of a subjugated and disciplined body --- a tame
>> ventriloquist. I
>> > would argue that if the "break away" is what we want to understand
>> then it
>> > would be very useful to study the "ones that got away" -- the
>> contexts and
>> > practices that produce diss-identification with culture's normative
>> > trajectory.
>> >
>> > Nice to be back,
>> >
>> > Mary
>> >
>> >
>
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