Re: [xmca] motive/project

Eric,

Your use of the term 'hermenutic' is apt, because the notion of the
hermeneutic circle is that one needs to interpret each part of a text in
terms of the whole and vice versa.

I'm suggesting that there is no unit of analysis for activity in general,
but a unit for each particular form of life one wants to study. But I'm also
suggesting a general criterion for the selection of a unit of analysis: that
it contain/embody the central contradiction of a form of life. But of course
one cannot know what that contradiction is for certain until one has
completed the analysis. So the hermeneutic circle applies: one begins with a
hunch/hypothesis about the contradiction, selects what seems the appropriate
unit of analysis, analyzes the form of life, and on the basis of what one
finds one may need to select a different unit.

Where is your sentence quoted from?

Martin

On 12/19/08 12:07 PM, "ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org" <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org> wrote:

>
> I certainly have had extended thinking time on this topic lately because I
> do believe it gets to the heart of the issue at hand. Consider the
> following sentence:
>
> "Appropriate an engaged activity." No motive, no desire just a process.
>
> It may not fulfill the requested hermeneutic unit of anlaysis but it
> certainly makes a statement about what does go on in human development in
> the cultural/societal domain. just a thought
>
> eric
>
>
>
> Martin Packer
> <packer@duq.edu> To: "eXtended Mind,
> Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Sent by: cc:
> xmca-bounces@web Subject: Re: [xmca]
> motive/project
> er.ucsd.edu
>
>
> 12/19/2008 09:47
> AM
> Please respond
> to "eXtended
> Mind, Culture,
> Activity"
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Andy,
>
> I'm struggling to catch up with piles of xmca messages after a week away
> from the computer, but your comment here caught my attention. Perhaps you
> would agree with me that the selection of the commodity form as the unit of
> analysis was based on the presumption that it contains the key
> contradiction
> of a capitalist economy. This suggests to me that the identification of a
> unit has to be based on a consideration of the whole in which it is found.
> And this in turn suggests that there can be no unit of analysis for
> 'activity' in the abstract, but rather a variety of units each of which
> depends on the concrete whole which one is studying. As you suggest,
> 'wooing' is an activity that is possible only in the 'world' - the form of
> life - of romance. So, when we select a unit we will need to acknowledge
> both the spatial and temporal discontinuities among distinct forms of life.
>
> Martin
>
> On 12/18/08 9:34 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
>> f I sing to my beloved while standing outside
>> in the rain, in what sense am I "using" something? There is
>> a school of thinking that would say, it makes me feel nice
>> to be wooing my beloved, therefore I am using her to make me
>> feel nice. But all that is really bankrupt, isn't it? We
>> have to get into the idea of romance and find in the
>> figuring of the world according to a concept of romance, a
>> set of motives, which motivate the series of related
>> practices which make up the universe of romantic activity.
>> "Use" applies OK only to a resicted sense of motivation.
>>
>> Andy
>
>
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Received on Fri Dec 19 10:03:58 2008